


A Greater Shadow

by RTrashPanda



Series: To Walk The Stars [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alien Characters, Alien Culture, F/F, F/M, Gen, Human vs alien racism, Murder, No Smut, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sex work (brief mention), Slavery, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 47,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26812546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RTrashPanda/pseuds/RTrashPanda
Summary: Zanna and Elaivani have returned to Earth to prepare for the threat to come and time is running out. Meanwhile, Brary's vendetta against Earth's Wall comes to a head, Amarice struggles to find her balance between her place in the action and her duties as a mother, and another incursion from the O'stari looms on the horizon.Updates on Saturday.
Series: To Walk The Stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955536
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue: The Conservationist

Prologue: The Conservationist

“The old philosophers were right all along. Humanity is but one node in a vast web, a part of all life of one Earth. The sooner we understand that in our souls, the better.”

–Yustice Haley, environmental scientist

Before: May 18, 2057; Pan-Californian Zoo & Aquarium

Parrish Vian pulled himself up the metal staircase, tightly grasping the handrail with each laboring step. His hand, dark skinned and spotted with blood where he coughed into it earlier, grasped the painted wood handrail to steady himself. He paused in his ascent to submit to the coughing fit wracking his body, acutely aware of the seconds ticking by. Parrish spat a globule of blood and a disturbingly large chunk of tissue he didn’t care to think about naming out on the steps and pressed on.

It was only luck that they had any knowledge of his condition at all. When the damned O’stari dropped their poison bombs just days before in cities across the world, reports started flooding in of the effects of the toxin. Only New York’s size had given the opportunity for survivors to speak on what they witnessed of the afflicted. If the city had been any smaller, less than the five days walking to cross the sprawling metropolis, the poison would have covered all of it. There was no known antidote and it was 100% fatal with a sufficient exposure.

When the staff and guests at the zoo were caught in the yellow plume rolling through the wrought iron front gate, they knew they only had hours left to live. The first thing they had to do was close down the zoo, ushering everyone who wasn’t an employee out into the parking lot. Some of the crowd sobbed with the horror of their impending fate—the gruesome effect of the poison was common knowledge. Parrish had been able to see the strange determination on some of their features, or a willful denial of the inevitable. Those were the ones who acted as though being shoved out of the zoo before they’d had their fill of seeing the animals was some kind of unreasonable inconvenience.

When the announcement was given, and all the guests evicted from the grounds, the zoo staff gathered in the cafeteria to have a last treat of ice cream, or their favorite type of espresso, whatever fanciful concoction the unaware food service robots could conjure, paying for it with a swipe of their implanted chips, headless of the expense that no longer mattered anyway—if it ever did. Parrish watched Jenny swipe her own chip to pay for Susan’s drink with a hesitant smile, even though they’d never gotten along, the hatchet buried in their last hours. The zoo staff mingled in the seating area, all semblance of following the rules no longer relevant.

They discussed their options. As zookeepers in the care some of the last few members of several endangered species, their first priority was giving the best chance of survival to the animals that they could. As the precious minutes ticked by, they put a plan into action.

Parrish bent double to cough some more front of the Pacific octopus while the strange eyes of the creature watched from an indentation in the artificial rocks of its tank. Smart animals, octopuses. If anything in the aquarium section had a chance of making it to the ocean, George would.

Slowly Parrish set up the evacuation tube from the octopus tank to the transport tank. As much as he was fond of that particular octopus, George would have to be one of the last released. Pacific octopuses weren’t an endangered species. If some died in the zoos around the world, the rest in the wild would still go on. But the zookeeper would help the octopus if he could.

Parrish had many memories of trying to contain George. The octopus had a remarkable personality and had escaped the enclosure on many occasions. The zookeeper pressed his palm to the side of the tank in a familiar ritual. In response, as he’d done many times before, Parrish could make out the shadow of a tentacle resting against the inside mirroring his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. Then another fit of coughing had his shoulders heaving. He gave the tank one last affectionate touch. “I’ll come back for you if I can.”

Parrish left the evacuation tube attached and running to make the best use of his disturbingly limited time and forced himself to climb the short staircase that so many feet had tread before. He remembered the astonished wonderment on the faces of so many visitors to the aquarium section. Especially the children, as they descended into the darkened corridors, which were shaped of rough artificial stone and illuminated with soft blue and green lights hidden in small cubbyholes underneath fronds of artificial ferns. This portion of the zoo was designed with an old coral reef in mind. Such things were nearly extinct in the wild, but records remained of when the reefs were vibrant living ecosystems sprawling across the ocean floor in large swaths of the world’s coastal regions.

He passed by another massive tank with the upper edge towering far above his head. In the blue illuminated water great white sharks, most of them not much longer than his arm, swam lazily by the glass without a single concern. Parrish was torn between envy and admiration for a moment. Of course they had nothing to worry about; they were apex predators that hadn’t evolved in ages because they didn’t have to. Still, he didn’t wish starvation on them, and that was their inevitable fate.

Parrish continued through the dark passage surrounded by the glittering colors of the tropical fish, like butterflies in the water, finally emerging to the path surrounded by thick walls of living bamboo. A gentle breeze tickled the plants, their swaying stalks and leaves rattling in their distinct, hollow way.

Jenny had already released the gazelles in the next enclosure a few hours before. At the meeting in the cafeteria the staff had chosen the order in which all the cages would be opened to give the animals the best possible chances. They couldn’t let them go all at once when some of the animals there would eat some of the others. By now she should have reached the big cat section, among the last few cages to be opened. Maybe she’d been killed by them. He didn’t want to speculate, preferring instead to focus on his own footfalls, carrying him too slowly to the pen for the rhinos.

Parrish reached the end of the path and used his badge to enter a door reserved for staff hidden in an unobtrusive break in the bamboo. Inside, he found the many controls for the automated systems—temperature sensors, cameras, and the switches used to control a few of the heavy locking gates around the enclosures belonging to some of the most dangerous, and valuable, of the zoo’s specimens.

He pulled a stiff lever, designed to be hard to use on purpose to prevent accidental releases. Then he watched the animals through the camera for a moment. Transmitters implanted in their skins allowed the zoo staff to monitor their condition more easily, to track subtle variations in their bodies that warned of developing sickness. Number fifty-eight and thirty-three, counted among the last hundred and fourteen of the eastern black species spread in a couple dozen captive breeding programs worldwide, were visible through the camera. The rhinos munched on the greenery in the enclosure, not the slightest care about the end of humanity.

Another, number seventy, investigated the portal through the thick steel bars. The creature took a few tentative steps out of the enclosure. Parrish turned from his surveillance to cough some more. When he regained his composure, he left the tiny room to make his way to the front entrance to open the last cages where the harpy eagles and California condors were housed in the birds of prey sanctuary.

His path took him near where the mountain lions were kept, the stonework steps veering one way to the big cats and another to where the birds of prey sanctuary stood in the zoo grounds. Up ahead, a body lay on the ground, directly across the path where he’d have to travel to release the birds, wearing the familiar loose blue shirt and black slacks that made up the zoo uniform.

It was Jenny, but there were no bite or claw marks. Just a small pool of bloody ooze that dripped from her mouth and matted in her carrot-orange hair. She was still warm, but even paler than her northern European ancestry made her in life. Further down the path the gate stood open to the big cat enclosure. Jenny had completed her task and collapsed shortly afterwards. Parrish didn’t have much time left before he suffered the same fate. He coughed, this time a reflexive spasm from the smell of death.

The cages for the birds were enormous, built to a dizzying height to give them a sense of being in the wild, each holding a large perch of a central pillar with smaller ledges and poles spiraling out from it. Shrubs carefully chosen for their impact on the animals sprawled at the bottom. As was their habit, the condors took to the highest rungs of the perch, fixing him with their imperious gazes. The pair of them were tagged like the rhinos, but their numbers in the wild were more stable. It was nothing for Parrish to release them, though. All it took was opening a doorway; the birds would do the rest. He did the same for the harpy eagles.

The last of the rare specimens given a route of escape, Parrish made his way back to the aquarium where George the octopus waited for transport to the beach. He unhooked the evacuation tube from the empty display tank, then the transport tank and flicked the switch controlling the machine off. Lifting the weighted lid on the top of the tank in the back of the vehicle parked by the maintenance exit—really just a glorified golf cart in his opinion—he peered inside to make sure George had gone where he intended. Satisfied, Parrish locked the lid and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The road leading out of the zoo’s parking lot was populated only by the few vehicles belonging to the staff. The maintenance cart didn’t have an impressive engine; it’s top speed was only about 40 mph, and that was on a downhill. But it had the necessary equipment attached to evacuate the octopus tank without harm to the animal inside and the solar panels on the roof ensured that it had enough charge to get to the bay where George could make his way to the ocean and perhaps find cooler waters.

Parrish’s mirthless laugh was interrupted by another fit of coughing, this time painful enough that he had to pull over until he was finished. The ecofascists in his extended family used to rant at the dinner table at Thanksgiving about the necessity of reducing human population to make room for all the other lives on the planet they’d so greedily hoarded. He didn’t agree with that mindset himself. There were many examples of how to coexist that didn’t involve killing people or forcing sterilization on them. Besides, he’d never heard an ecofascist explain a reasonable plan for that reduction that didn’t reveal their own prejudice against anyone they saw as _lesser_.

Ordinarily it would be completely unthinkable to spit inside a vehicle, but it wasn’t as if he was going to return it. Who would he even return it to? He rested his head on the steering wheel while the small line of red goop dribbled out of his nose onto the floorboard. The beach was so far away and he was running out. Of time. Of energy. The sheer stubbornness and force of will. He pulled back into the mostly empty street and continued on his path to the water’s edge, weaving around the stalled vehicles and gently smoking wrecks that littered the way.

The road took him directly to the beach with no other turns, with a down hill slope to the edge of the San Diego Bay. On a normal day, it would have been nearly impossible to access the water with the octopus tank. The docks were usually too crowded with the affluent who owned their own boats. Today it was quiet. Peaceful.

Parrish drove out onto the sand, forsaking any of the usual rules about who was allowed to do what. He didn’t come from money himself, and now at the edge of death, he could see just how silly and pointless it all was. The ecofascists got their way after all, but not how they hoped.

He used both hands with his failing grip to open the door before stumbling out onto the beach, spilling more red-brown drops on the sand. Leaning into the side of the vehicle, he hooked up the tube that would set George free, stretching the other end out towards the water before flicking the switch. The machine hummed to life and Parrish climbed back into the seat of the old golf cart to watch the glorious spread of color across the sunset-painted sky.

A few minutes later, George flopped out of the tube on the sand, at the edge of the gently lapping waves of a high tide. A tiny smile played on Parrish’s blood-flecked lips.

“Survive,” he tried to say. It came out as a wet gurgle, but it was the only prayer he could offer.


	2. Imprisonment

Chapter 1: Imprisonment

“The days before my trial was the most peaceful time in my life. I got a lot of thinking done, and the food was free.”

–Posta McDonald, former prisoner at the stocks in Alliance

Present:  Salt Flat Launch Facility

Zanna sat on an overturned baked clay box with her wrists bound behind her back, the ceramic under her uncomfortably hard, focusing on maintaining her calm. In spite of Amarice’s insistence that the precaution wasn’t necessary, the person in charge of the place had chosen to have her separated from Elaivani, both of them bound with ropes and sent to different rooms. Now she waited alone for someone to interrogate her.

The room was a storage area, plain mud brick walls obscured by a tangle of Before-craft junk, incomprehensible to her eyes, and rough tools for building. Streams of light trickled in from a series of small skylights, each no wider than her hand. Zanna watched the motes of dust caught in the shaft of light, stirred by her breath.

She thought back to Amarice’s expression as one of the strangely dressed people in the facility tied the knots holding her now. It had been a mix of determination, relief, and a little edge of carefully concealed worry betrayed in the small crease of tension around her eyes. Probably no one else noticed—Amarice didn’t negotiate well by wearing all of her emotions on her face for everyone to read.

Zanna was walking on shaky ground in this place and although she didn’t believe they would execute her without so much as a conversation, there was still that tiny voice murmuring that it was _possible_ that they would.

“Escape is not out of the question,  if  you wish it,” Archivist spoke in her mind.  Zanna noted with some relief that the symbio te didn’t remind her that it  _had_ recommended that she stay on the O’stari home world.  It would have  been safer.

“But that doesn’t really further my goals,” she replied out loud to the otherwise empty room.

“Neither does being imprisoned or killed,” Archivist countered. Aware that her machine-parasite no longer had a voice of its own, she thought she detected a snarky note in its tone.

“Let’s just wait for now.”

Moments later the door opened,  r evealing a man with graying hair and a slight build. He flipped another box similar to the one Zanna sat on and placed it directly in front of her, out of reach of her legs, even if she  decided to kick on her way out. He settled on top of it, crossing his arms and leaning back against a wall. His posture suggested boredom, but the bags under his eyes and  the tight-drawn lines at the  corners of his mou th told a different story . 

“ My name is Conan,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

“Where is Elaivani?” Sometimes the people of Earth were hostile to half-O’stari like her. She could only imagine the enmity  someone fully alien  might inspire. Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring him with her. 

“He’s fine,” Conan said, dismissing the subject. “Talk to me about why you came back.”

“ The O’stari call it the  _ Baowe Zeo, _ the rolling death.  They discovered them, the people or things, during the war. That’s why they left.”

Conan leaned forward slightly, frowning. Zanna continued.

“There was another people, on another planet, similar to both humans and O’stari. They were wiped out. I can show you if I can have my hands free.”

Conan scratched his chin and tilted his head while he considered the implied request. Then he stood and opened the door again, gesturing to someone outside. Another man, this one with a huskier frame and darker complexion wearing the armor of the Tethered Ball temple’s priests entered the room. Following behind him was a younger woman with mousy hair wearing a strange one-piece suit in an unappealing shade of oil-stained orange.

With more people to back him up in case Zanna became violent, Conan untied her hands.

“Alright, lets see what you have,” Conan said with a slight nod.

Zanna produced the memory core she’d taken from Shade’s Respite from under her clothing, admiring the shining blue lines in the casing before swiping her thumb over it.

“Show me the discovery of the world of the dead civilization, the one killed by the _Baowe Zeo_ ,” she said to the cube. It contained a duplicate of Archivist’s stored knowledge. While it wasn’t a full artificial intelligence on its own, it could understand simple commands and would produce the records at her request.

The shine of blue light extended upward in a moving image, the glowing lines shifting color as they traced the shape of the O’stari explorers making their way through the ruins of a city, their gazes turned upwards to marvel at the alien architecture. The recorded figures continued on their trek, pausing to collect a few artifacts along the way. When it came to a point that Zanna recognized from Shade’s Respite, she gave the cube other instructions.

“Show me what they found recorded by the dead culture,” she said. The images above the cube changed, painting a thriving, impossibly busy city street under strange shapes in the sky. All of the people—similar to both humans and O’stari, yet not the same as either—stopped to stare agape in wonderment, a strange ecstasy written over their slack-jawed faces.

When the recording finished, the air as empty above the cube as before, Conan and the two strangers in the room shifted, exchanging loaded glances between them.

“What does it mean?” the as yet unnamed spark priest murmured behind Conan.

“It means that there is something scarier than the O’stari out there.” Conan’s mouth was a hard line of stubbornness. “I didn’t think that was possible, but here we are.”

His gaze met Zanna’s own. “Do the O’stari have any more information on it?”

She shrugged, slipping the memory core back under her shirt. “While I was there, they didn’t want to talk about it. Most of the O’stari seem to want to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.”

“Why did you come back with… Elaivani, is it?”

“Because he was the only person willing to do something about it. He was here at the end of the war, trying to give Earth the tools to live.”

Conan blinked in surprise. “That would make him at least a hundred years old. He doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”

“Yes, that’s O’stari medicine.” Her eyes moved over to the spark priest to gauge his reaction. “He started the spark priest orders. He’s their prophet.”

* * *

Elaivani strained against his restraints, gritting his teeth. This was becoming all too familiar to him, but they were nothing more than simple hemp rope. His captors thought him helpless when they’d taken Zanna away and left him in a room with nothing but the ropes, a backless metal chair, and a locked door to keep him in place. Little did they know that was insufficient to hold him. If they’d harmed the girl after everything he’d done to keep her alive, there wouldn’t be enough water for days in any direction to wash away the blood.

He slammed his shoulder into the door with a grunt. It did nothing to release his bonds, but it would let him test how attentive any guards might be and lure them into false complacency. After a few more experimental thumps, he picked up the chair behind his back. Swinging wildly as far as his bound arms would allow with a twist of his body, he struck the wall with the metal stool. The noise didn’t matter, anyone outside would assume he was just thrashing about in helpless anger. That suited him just fine.

Shifting the stool in his grip to better reach the joints of its construction—weak spots he could exploit—he hit the wall again, this time feeling the slight give in the rivets. Another couple of hits and a leg broke off the stool, leaving an exposed edge that was sharper than the rest of it which he could use to cut his restraints.

He maneuvered himself on the floor so that he could kick the low outside corner of the door while he sawed through the ropes binding his hands behind his back as a small distraction. It was just enough noise that no one would be suspicious when he’d suddenly gone too quiet.The hinges of the door were on the other side. Pity. That would have made breaking out easier, but he had other ways. They’d made a mistake in confining him to a room not much bigger than a closet.

Elaivani maintained his thumping on the door as the fraying ropes snapped apart, gradually decreasing the tempo and intensity. Let them think he’d grown tired and given up. He braced with his shoulders and hands against the wall opposite the door. Angling his body so the greatest force would impact just under the handle, he kicked hard. The iron latch snapped a piece off the door frame, sending the door swinging into wall of the hallway outside with a bang.

Rolling quickly to his feet, Elaivani took the pieces of the stool with him as a makeshift club and shield, then stepped out of the room into freedom.

Further down the hall was a man with grease smears on his face and the armored uniform of the Tethered Ball temples. Elaivani hadn’t expected to meet someone trained in the martial arts of his home world as resistance in his escape attempt. An odd sense of betrayal washed over him, but Elaivani didn’t let that stop him. The other man drew a club from his belt and Elaivani rushed to meet him, holding the rest of the stool by one of its legs in defense.

The spark priest was relatively low in the hierarchy if the stripe painted on his hard hat was any indication. But he spent a lot of time sparring with his brothers and sisters, that much Elaivani could see in his movements. Even still, he hadn’t mastered the art to the degree that Elaivani had, and was soon defeated, his hat knocked off and making an odd metallic thrumming sound as it wobbled upside down on the floor. Elaivani paused, holding him at bay with his ‘club’ centimeters from the side of his bare head. The priest stared at him with narrowed eyes.

“Yield,” Elaivani commanded through panting breaths.

“Who _are_ you?” the young priest asked, equally winded.

The question was unintentionally deep. Elaivani didn’t know anymore; it wasn’t that long ago that he wouldn’t have hesitated to strike the finishing blow, even against one of the many faceless spark priests he’d helped to foster into being. In a way, this man was his intellectual grandchild, a descendant of the educational lineage he started when he first defected.

A gasp drew Elaivani’s attention from the spark priest. Zanna stood beside the stocky woman with curly hair he’d seen her with before, the scavenger sent to Shade’s Respite by Taco Jack.

Zanna approached with a tight smile plastered on her features.

“Oh, good,” she said to the spark priest as if they hadn’t clearly been fighting moments before. “You’ve already let him out; I was just coming to get him for a talk with Conan.”

The other woman hung back, her wary eyes shifting from the spark priest to Elaivani.

Elaivani straightened and let the pieces of the stool clang on the floor without another glance at the spark priest. Let him find his own answers.

“I brought you something to eat,” Zanna said, before shoving an apple and a piece of dried meat at him.

Elaivani remained silent, hesitant to speak around so many potential enemies. Zanna turned and walked away. The scavenger followed, casting furtive backward glances his direction. He trailed behind the two women, leaving the spark priest staring after them in confusion.


	3. Stalker in the Streets

Chapter 2: Stalker in the Streets

“Where does the sun go when it needs to sleep? Always home to its spouse, Big Water, far to the west.”

–Ford Deere, Storyteller

Brary sat next to the wall of the common room of the tavern in Cradle’s Edge, staring into his mug. His plain, but serviceable garments provided camouflage among the tired laborers trying to forget their personal demons in the mugs of ale. Even his once prized hat adorned with a multitude of running bird plumes had been discarded in favor of a loose hood pulled low over his head. Though he was putting on a careful show, he’d barely touched the drink and kept his ears open to the voices around him.

When Attorney was murdered, Brary left the cooper’s shop a burnt out ruin and tracked down his killers. He found plenty of evidence that they were more members of Earth’s Wall—their patches, a few notes, and even a flyer ranting against the “O’stari menace” victimizing the good people of Earth—targeting the cooper for his O’stari ancestry. 

After seeing that justice was done with the edge of his blade, Brary made his way back to Cradle’s Edge. He’d lost the trail of the man he saw agitating the crowd in the market square when he’d gone with Amarice to look for Zanna. At the time, it seemed like the most important thing, though ultimately fruitless. Zanna was still lost to him, after everything he’d done to get her back.

Now he waited among the common laborers drinking away their fochs after a day’s work in the hot sun, those that were free anyway. The enslaved were probably in their run down shacks in Beggar’s Town—the worst part of the city—or around their owners’ homes. Beggar’s Town was dark when he entered the tavern, in contrast to the rest of the city, which was dotted with small lights. Usually they were firelight in the form of a lantern or torch, but more and more of the nicer houses in the city sported electric lighting and black panels along their rooftops, all purchased from the spark priests for exorbitant fees. Conspicuous consumption at its finest.

The man he trailed behind—an associate of Solstice Valmonde’s going by the name Horse Bend, according to his sources—sat at the bar where he could chat with the tapster. Or flirt, more accurately. Brary sighed. He might have to kill the barkeep, too. People often changed their minds on things to match those they were romantically involved with. It wasn’t so much of a burden to him, but he wished the man would hurry up.

Soon the other customers in the tavern began to drift out the door to wander the streets in search of a bed. Most would make it to their homes, but Brary was certain some of them were drunk enough to look for a slightly more comfortable place in the dirt and cobblestone streets, maybe to be mugged for the few remaining fochs in their pockets. Brary rubbed his temples. When would he just shut up and leave? He didn’t want to be kicked out at closing time. That would defeat the purpose of his efforts to be unremarkable.

Finally Horse stood, his advances rebuffed again. Brary stood as well, leaving his drink behind to get out the door before his target did. Most people were less likely to think they were being followed by the person in front of them. 

He reached the door just before his target and let it shut rudely behind him, relishing the sound of the grumbling curses that followed. Horse was in a foul mood after the lady behind the bar verbally put him in his place. It was understandable; Brary himself was frustrated in his attempts to woo Zanna, or even to find her after Earth’s Wall burned her home to the ground. But Brary wasn’t going to allow Horse to live long enough to try again. So in a way, it was a mercy to cut him down before he further embarrassed himself in public.

The winding, narrow street in the low class neighborhood was littered with refuse, the contents of many chamber pots emptied out of windows each morning piled up, then cleared away by the street sweepers once each week.  Other parts of town were also cleaned on a schedule, but that schedule increased in frequency the higher the status of the residents.  Questionable  dark smears stained the cobblestones and foul odors rose,  masking other, less vigorous scents. That was fine for Brary; it would give him a greater window of time to be somewhere else when the body was discovered.

The sound of Horse’s boots scraping as he staggered prompted Brary to slow his own pace. For effect Brary paused against a wall, feigning nausea from too much drink. He needn’t have bothered; Horse shuffled past him without even a sideways glance. 

Brary continued to  follow his target  at a distance , until Horse turned down a deserted street mostly out of view of the main passageways.  Seizing his opportunity, Brary ducked into the side street behind him, drew the crossbow he kept strapped to his back, loaded it and cranked the trigger in place before taking aim at the  Horse’s weaving figure . The bolt sang a short whistle as it sped through the air before sinking into the back of Horse’s left thigh. Not enough to kill immediately, but enough to slow him down.

The hunter sprinted the rest of the distance to his hobbled and cursing prey and slammed him into the wall of one of the dilapidated shops lining the street. Made of stucco and brick, with a large chimney rising above the rooftop, Brary noted with a quick assessing glance. Probably a bakery, and the owners might be sleeping upstairs. Horse struggled against him, venomous language dripping from his lips. Some people just didn’t know when they were beaten.

Brary punched him hard in the back and wrestled him to the ground. There he went to work binding his hands, putting all of his weight on Horse’s neck and back.  Apparently just now understanding the danger he was in, or perhaps realizing that bluster wouldn’t help him the way it had at other times in his life, Horse shouted as loud as he could with Brary putting pressure on his diaphragm. Which wasn’t much, but Brary kept a wary ear open for the sounds of approaching footsteps. 

“Where is Solstice Valmonde?” he demanded.

When Horse gave no answer except to fight against his binds, Brary hauled him up and forced a torn scrap of cloth stained with blood and saliva from his previous kills into his mouth before shoving him toward the public outhouse next to the rebuilt grain mill at the next intersection.

The mill had caught fire early one evening on one of his previous visits to the city. It was just as he was closing on another member of Earth’s Wall. He didn’t know it at the time, but Zanna  had been among the crowd in the streets . Wherever she was now, she was lucky that she wasn’t caught by them then.  While the mill burned, there was chaos in the streets and Brary lost both his target and the woman he hadn’t hoped to find since.

After  the fire, the city gave the mill extra space. Some of the buildings nearby were consumed in the blaze as well. But the bucket lines saved much of the mill, with volunteers helping to rebuild it as it was essential to the continued survival of many of the residents of Cradle’s Edge. People couldn’t eat plastic. With all the space around the mill, it was the perfect location for Brary’s purposes.

Checking both ways at the end of the alley for pedestrians, Brary pushed Horse across the street toward the newly rebuilt and upgraded building. Brary forced the gagged man inside the cramped, smelly  outhouse built over a cesspit  and pushed him down to sit on the mudbrick bench, then latched the door and pulled the cloth out of his mouth.

“ Let’s try this again,” Brary said. “You’re tied up in the public latrine with no one else but me around .  Where is Solstice?”

Horse, seemingly as dumb as his namesake, spat a thick glob of mucus which landed solidly on Brary’s coat.  Brary responded by balling his fist and punching him in the mouth. Horse  flailed his legs , unable to get the leverage from his seated position to do more than tap at  the hunter ’s shins. 

“Doing this the hard way then,” Brary muttered. Thick-headed fool had to make this difficult. He pulled Horse up to his feet and kicked aside the top of the bench over the foul sludge-filled pit below. Horse took the opportunity to headbutt him, striking him hard in the nose. A warm trickle of blood spilled from his nostrils as he fell back against the locked door. At least Horse couldn’t get away with Brary right in front of him blocking the only exit.

Regaining his balance, but still seeing stars, Brary roughly grabbed the front of Horse’s shirt and spun him around. Kicking the back of his knees to make them bend, Brary forced him face down into the collected waste in the cesspit. Horse shrieked and coughed as he took a lungful of the smelly vapors and his hair dangled in the muck. 

Brary leaned heavily on his backside and legs.

“So you do have a voice,” Brary said. “I was beginning to doubt.”

“I can’t tell you anything.” Horse whined. “They’ll kill me if I do.”

“Die tomorrow or die today,” came Brary’s nonchalant reply. “At least with some time you have a chance to escape.”

“Fine, just pull me up.”

Brary did so, returning him to a seated position after replacing the bench.

“Solstice moves around,” Horse sputtered  with a cough . “But he’s supposed to come back in four days. Usually calls a meeting in the back of  Olie’s Mudworks .”

“ The potter’s shop?” Brary  asked , his tone dubious.  Such a small and humble building was the last place he would have expected as a meeting place. 

Indistinct voices and  the  sound of clinking metal outside interrupted  before Horse could speak. It could only be the night watch making their rounds. Horse immediately seized the opportunity to scream again for help. Brary spared a panicked glance through the small slit in the door before drawing his hunting knife and burying it betwee n his captive ’s ribs.   
Brary unlatched the door and fled the outhouse down the street. Behind him, he could hear the guards and Horse’s faint voice.  At least he was good for a distraction. He didn’t have the time to silence the idiot properly, but with that wound he would be dead before morning. 

In his time stalking the streets of Cradle’s Edge, Brary learned a great deal about the layout of the city, the forgotten spaces most of the foot traffic avoided. He ducked under an awning and down another street. The  guards were far enough behind him that they wouldn’t see which way he went next. They were probably busy with Horse anyway. Even if they couldn’t save his life, they would want to speak with him. Brary’s mind raced, turning over the moments leading up to the present. He was sure Horse wouldn’t be able to tell them much about him.  
Brary made another change in direction as a precaution to further confuse pursuers that he didn’t think were coming and slowed his pace to a comfortable walk.  J ust another traveler, a trader who’d spent too much time in the public house. He took a rag out from his pocket and wiped the blood from his hands and his hunting knife before sheathing it and tossing the stained scrap of fabric aside in one of the  crumbling streets of Beggar’s Town, where acts of violence were so common no one would notice it. 


	4. A Larger Concern

Chapter 3: A Larger Concern

“The trees call to the clouds with words only they can speak, the O’stari knew this. Can’t you hear their song?”

–Rustown Coulee, Mad Hermit

“Did Stinker ever get his tattoos?” Zanna asked the woman leading them to the meeting.

Elaivani wasn’t sure who Conan was, but they must be someone important here. Stinker was known to him, though, and that brought back a flood of unpleasant memories. He’d tortured that dancer for information about who Taco Jack was most likely to send to Shade’s Respite. In hindsight, it said good things about him that he lasted as long as he did before giving up anything useful, either about his tolerance for physical pain or his moral fortitude.

Amarice mumbled an affirmative before casting a sidelong glance back at him.

“That’s good, right?” Zanna’s tone sounded confused, but he couldn’t see her face from his position walking behind them.

They passed by a large chamber where the door hung open to allow air flow. The weather was oppressively hot in the salt flat, being indoors without the cooling flow of air would make it unbearable. Inside the room a large, mixed group of spark priests were gathered. The conversations in the room stopped as the multi-disciplined collection turned nearly as one to stare at her. Or rather, to stare at Elaivani behind the two women.

Once out of view of the doorway, Zanna returned her attention to Amarice.

“Seriously, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “Why are there so many spark priests here?”

Amarice eyed her warily, flicking her gaze out of the corner of her eye back again at Elaivani. This time Zanna understood her trepidation. “Some of them were here when I got here, but one of the engineers told me that they came because they heard about the People from Before returning from the sky.”

“If you’re worried that I will cause problems, don’t,” Elaivani said.

Amarice ignored him and pushed open another door. “I’ll tell you later.”

On the other side of the door was another room, much smaller than the one filled with spark priests. Several people waited inside, most of them with a sallow cast to their skin that stood out in contrast to the tan, gray-haired man sitting behind the large, patchwork metal workbench. Not spark priests, judging by their clothing.

The man behind the workbench gestured at the empty, mismatched chairs that stood facing the rest. Zanna complied without hesitation and Elaivani sank onto the too small stool next to hers. He’d gotten too comfortable with the appropriately sized furniture on Water.

“We haven’t been introduced yet,” he said to Elaivani. “My name is Conan.”

He propped his elbows on the workbench and rested his chin on his interlaced fingers. His next question was directed at Zanna. “Tell me again about the _Baowe Zeo._ ” 

It was a common tactic—ask the same questions repeatedly to find the inconsistencies in the story. Elaivani remained silent, folding his arms and glaring at the assembled humans.

“As I said before,” Zanna began. “The _Baowe Zeo_ is something the O’stari discovered while exploring another planet during the war. As far as I can tell, no one is sure what exactly it is and why it wiped out the other people. There are theories, but nothing solid.”

“Such as?” Zanna’s eyes darted to Elaivani, clearly asking for his input.

“I think they were farming,” Elaivani said. The whole group focused on him. Their strange clothes and the pallor of their skin suggested that they all came from the sky-cities. Yet Conan was leading the place. He must have returned to Earth before them. Or perhaps the others spent all their time indoors.

“What makes you think that?” Conan asked.

“Humans and O’stari can crossbreed,” Elaivani said—it was so strange to refer to his people using the misnomer developed from their lack of understanding in those early attempts to communicate with the humans. When his people first spoke to the humans, they didn’t know the language well enough to correctly say that they where the “people of the stars.” It came out as the “people o’stari” instead, and the name stuck. It didn’t help that their physical differences lent themselves to development of the “star-eyes” slur so often used against the half humans.

Elaivani continued. “The chances of such a close similarity developing naturally on two planets separated by months of space travel is infinitesimal. And there’s no reason to suspect the people of the third planet—we call them _Vurom-Pema_ —were not also compatible.”

“If the  _ Baowe Zeo _ were somehow ‘planting’ people on the planets, then returning sometime later to harvest, it would explain a lot,” Zanna said. 

“It would mean that all humans and all O’stari were related, coming from the same source,” Conan said. “It also implies intent— n ot a random,  hand-of-the-divine  event.  Are we food then? ”

Elaivani shrugged. Zanna bounced one foot on the ground. “Presumably.”

Conan scrubbed his face with his hands. “We need more information. So much more information.”

Elaivani exchanged a glance with Zanna.   
“The memory core holds a lot, but the other compounds have more,” he said, careful keep it vague. “The Archivists originally had a network of communication, but they all handled different areas of study.”

“You mean the O’stari who stayed behind?” Conan frowned. “Is that what they were?”

“No, the Archivists run the functions of the compounds. They’re—well, you might call them advanced computers that think like people.”

“I know what an artificial intelligence is,” Conan huffed. _Now I’ve stepped in it,_ Elaivani thought. His gaze flickered to Zanna. He would have to be more careful not to offend the natives. He didn’t personally care what they thought of him, but for reasons he didn’t yet fathom, they were important to her.

* * *

“Today you’re going to go into town with the others,” Master Day said. Her hands rested loosely in her pockets while she evaluated Queen’s form as the girl practiced in the courtyard surrounded by a profusion of colors and the buzz of honeybees. The martial art specific to the Twisted Snake temples, given to them by the prophet, was characterized by its application of the blades they used to perform surgeries. Ironic that the tools to save lives could also end them just as easily. Easier, even. It was always simpler to destroy than to repair. When the girl had more control, Day would teach her how to use the blades to disable rather than kill. That was more difficult.

Queen didn’t hesitate in the graceful motions between one position in the sequence of exercises and the next, but the hitch in her breath spoke of … something. Eagerness? Anxiety? The temple master couldn’t be certain. Healing a fractured mind was the hardest of all.

It was a new challenge for the girl, to be sure. Queen hadn’t been around so many other people and so near to the kin who once sold her into slavery since Eleven brought her to the temple. But Day had the task of turning the scrawny child into a strong, well-educated apprentice to learn from the prophet directly, something that hasn’t happened since he first taught the original founders of the spark priest orders. Day had no illusions about the rigor of the training Eleven was sure to put her through, so she had to be ready. And that meant she couldn’t remain a cowering child afraid of the masses.

When Queen finished the last move in the sequence, Day turned on her heel to return to the shaded rooms within the temple to signal the end of physical training for the day.

“Kyleen and Rite will direct you while you’re in the marketplace. Obey them,” came Day’s terse command.

“Why are we going?” Queen asked. The temple master encouraged her questions about how the temple ran or anything about the body—nothing was off limits. But it wasn’t a question about why some of the spark priests were going to the city so much as a question about why _she_ was required to go.

“The temple needs some supplies,” Day replied. “It’s also wise to be aware of an outbreak of disease before it infects too many, so we send some of our own to offer aid in exchange for what we need.”

Queen fell silent beside her. Instead of their usual routine of climbing the stairs to the upper floors for her lessons, Day lead her to the main hall where the other two spark priests were moving their supplies in preparation for the visit to Cradle’s Edge.

Kyleenstood over the assembled reed baskets filled with jars of dried herbs and tinctures, smaller vials vaccine-laced tattoo inks, bundles of gauze, and sealed disinfectant containers, taking a final inventory before loading the wagon where Rite was currently coaxing a pair of donkeys into position. Also going into the wagon were provisions for the spark priests themselves—preserved meat and fruit, distilled water, a few of the first vegetables of the season, and feed for the animals.

“Queen will be going with you today,” Day said to Kyleen. “She’s there to assist and learn.”

The younger woman offered Queen an inviting smile at odds with the severity of her tight hair bun. “That would explain the extra food in the pack. I thought it was too much for just me and Rite.”

With that, Day left Queen standing in the hall to return to her study. The girl shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

Kyleen glanced over. “I just have to finish checking everything, then we’ll load up.”

“What is it all for?” Queen asked.

“Most of it is just for minor ailments,” Kyleen said. “We won’t be equipped to handle anything complex there, but if someone needs a few stitches, or a bone set, that’s easy enough to treat.”

“But people come here for those things.” Queen’s features scrunched up in puzzlement.

“Sometimes they do, but not everyone can afford the time away, or has someone to help them,” Kyleen explained, turning one of the containers to look at the contents. “A lot of people see us for scurvy. Or because they don’t understand why everyone in their family has the same health problems after a few generations of inbreeding. People tend to put those things off unless one of us is right in front of them.”

Queen said nothing more and watched Kyleen work. Rite appeared in the hall and declared the wagon ready for travel. Kyleen gestured to some of the lighter baskets kept separate from the others.

“Those have to go on top,” she said, picking up a heavier one.

Before leaving the temple, Kyleen handed Queen an over sized cloth mask to protect her from the blowing dust. A small cap over her hair with a tie snug against the nape of her neck completed her bleach-white uniform for the journey.

The three of them packed the wagon and climbed up into the bench seat, with Rite holding the reins. It was only an hour to the southern gate of the city by foot, and the donkeys made similar time, when Rite could keep them from stopping to nibble on the plants in the sandy soil along the way.

The exterior wall of Cradle’s Edge was covered in banners in the colors of spring, delicate swirls of pastel shades celebrating the new growth of the world around them to please the spirits and prevent disasters in the city. Queen had never understood exactly which of the designs on the banners corresponded with which spirit, but she liked the lavender and green ones the best.

Rite nodded to the gate guards as they approached. The gate stood open to allow the free passage of travelers, but the spark priests did not enter. The wagon came to a stop on an area of the ground flattened and cleared of wild plant life, signs of previous visits to the city. Rite hopped down from the wagon’s bench, then helped Queen to the ground while Kyleen stretched her legs walking to the back of the wagon.


	5. Unexpected Encounters

Chapter 4: Unexpected Encounters

“The road north to Alliance and towns beyond is forever sleepless.”

–Maychen Keel, Traveling Merchant

Certified brought the metal chopsticks to his mouth, not really tasting his food as he sat like an island in the currents of a river as the mingled spark priests and engineers from the sky-cities chattered around him. By now the news of their “guest” had spread through the whole facility, whispered rumors that he noticed but paid little attention. None of the gossips had actually faced the alien directly in a fight. But who was he kidding anyway? The prisoner, if he ever could be called such a thing in the first place made him look like the greenest acolyte. 

He picked at his meal, though it was far more enticing than what was available when he first arrived to the launch facility months before. The bite-sized chunks of spiced meat and spring vegetables over the bed of poached amaranth cooled in a pool of their own juices, as purposeless as Certified himself.

The O’stari man fought like a spark priest. No, that wasn’t quite right. More like a temple master with decades of training. He beat Certified easily without harming him, something that demonstrated a skill far beyond his own. There were no O’stari on Earth for at least twenty years and the prisoner looked far too young to have studied as a spark priest before that.

Nothing made sense.

Unless everything did.

Certified barked a laugh. And kept laughing. Some of the other spark priests, a mix of all the denominations that trickled into the launch facility since the first shuttle landing, stopped talking to stare at him. But that didn’t stop him. There was something profoundly ironic in those among his brothers and sisters who also supported Earth’s Wall while practicing an art that must have developed first among the O’stari.

A shadow crossed the table. He looked up to find his own temple master standing over him.

“Brother Certified,” Sinclair said. “May I discuss something with you outside?”

Certified regarded his neglected bowl. It was against the traditions of the order to let useful things go to waste, but his half-eaten food was such a minor thing. He pushed it aside and stood from the bench to follow Sinclair through the doors and into the communal garden outside. It was still too early in the year for many flowers, but one of the small trees was covered in little green buds with a hint of pink petals showing in the cracks and a few variegated purple blossoms lower to the ground pushed aside the dirt to reach for the returning warmth of the sun.

“Did I do something wrong?” Certified asked. He’d already informed the temple master about the fight in the corridor when the prisoner escaped the storage room they’d put to use as a holding cell.

“No, not at all,” Master Sinclair replied. “I’m going to tell you a secret. One traditionally only known to temple masters.”

Who would argue with receiving new knowledge? Certified followed as Sinclair lead the way even further from any possible eavesdroppers.

“It’s something that we all learn once we achieve the rank of master,” Sinclair continued, stalling. “The secret at the heart of all the orders, their foundation. I’m only telling you now to ease your mind, and maybe to curb some of the rumors.”

When they were far enough away that no one could accidentally overhear the conversation, Sinclair stopped to speak the words like dropping a stone into a glassy pond. “The man you fought the other day is the Prophet.”

* * *

On the other side of the facility, Elaivani rubbed his jaw on his shoulder to clear away the bead of sweat that tickled as it rolled down his face, keeping the short clubs in his hands raised to block Zanna’s incoming blows. The sacred calling of teaching deserved as much of his attention as he could give. Though Zanna was a beginner, it would be remiss of him to have his focus drift elsewhere. Not to mention embarrassing if she managed a lucky hit. He smiled at the memory of their early interactions, when he had her paralyzed in that ratty vehicle in order to save her life and she fought back then with surprising tenacity. Now he had the opportunity to nurture her raw abilities into something truly formidable.

The master of the launch facility—Conan, he reminded himself—still hadn’t given them clearance to leave, but at least they weren’t locked up separately in closets and bound in ropes anymore.

“Remember your footing,” he said. Zanna widened her stance a little for stability. Without another word, Elaivani switched from defensive to offensive, taking lazy swipes at her to allow her time to get into the flow of motion, gradually speeding up until he clipped her knuckles. He stepped back as she shook out her hands and made a silent “ow” face.

“Do you need a break?” he asked.

Zanna adjusted her grip on her own pair of clubs. They’d spent their first month practicing hand to hand, because there could be a situation where she didn’t have anything; she would have to rely on just her hands and her wits then. But they would go back to hands only soon. In Elaivani’s experience, learning was most easily accomplished if the student wasn’t bored, so he preferred not to spend too much time on any one thing. This would allow her time to rest, to let the new knowledge settle, and to the make the mental connections between techniques. Her stubbornness brought another faint smile to his lips.

“A little bruise isn’t going to stop me,” she growled, lifting the clubs slightly into a starting position. Elaivani shrugged and continued raining blows on her defenses. He didn’t let up on the pressure, but didn’t speed up again either, just stepping closer when she backed away.

He’d chosen the south side of the building on purpose. The gentle warmth of sunrise brought sticky lines of sweat to their skins by the early part of midday. Heat stroke was a danger to watch for, though the coolness of spring mitigated the risk. But it also afforded them privacy, as most of the people living and working there preferred the shaded north facing for their strolls through the garden when they were taking time away from their tasks inside.   
The garden itself was an impressive feat of engineering. With dirt carried in from elsewhere, necessitated by the salt content of the soil around the building, they built raised beds deep enough to accommodate the complex root systems of their crops. An aqueduct diverted water from the distant hills to an artificial reservoir dug deep in the ground and lined with brickwork. He once planned for them to blend together eventually as they shared technology, but all his skills as a statistical anthropologist could predict the most general outcomes. The humans were touched by chaos in a way that defied the best mathematical models he’d ever crafted.

Zanna’s near-blackhair hung limp and stuck to her face, which was streaked with dark lines of dust carried by the wind. Elaivani wanted her to train in a variety of environments to improve her resiliency in each of them, so today they practiced outside in the hottest part of the day without head or face coverings. If Conan ever released them for travel—and Elaivani was of a mind to escape if it didn’t happen soon—he would fly with her to the far northern stretches of land on Earth for training in a cold environment. She might even like the snow.

As it was, both of them were stuck at the facility without access to the ship. Elaivani suspected that the handful of engineers from space who were assisting Conan were probably busy studying it, trying to learn its secrets. The ship was constructed during the war and even at nearly a century in age, it was a piece of technology more advanced than anything the sky-cities had yet built. The humans still hadn’t created a true AI or developed the math necessary for long range space travel. But all they had to do was ask him, and he would have gladly taught them everything he knew.

For now, Zanna was his student and his main focus. When they weren’t sparring in the desert she studied with her Archivist to bring her up to the same level as any O’stari child attempting to graduate to an apprenticeship. 

Elaivani herded Zanna back toward the wall of the facility and there was nowhere left for her to  go with her retreat . He stepped away from her, both of them dropping their arms to the side and panting  from their exertions and the heat.

The metal door to Zanna’s left opened with a loud squeak and Amarice appeared behind the rust-streaked metal.

“Conan wants to speak with you two,” she said.

* * *

Ryumeud cruised over one dusty hovel of a town after another.  It was a simple thing to sneak past the space stations in orbit around Earth. No one there could help him with his current goals, so he didn’t bother talking to them. Once he descended to fly in the planet’s atmosphere, he searched for anything that would pass as a cultural center. The towns were all so small, yet jarring to see that they were significantly larger than last time he was on Earth  nearly fifty years before .

His ship  glided in silence in the air, and flew with greater speed in space than the worn out hunk of junk the fugitives  used , but his investigations took him some time and gave them a head start. Rebey  denied any knowledge of  her sister’s plans , but Ryumeud also spoke to the head counselor at the rehabilitation facility.  That led him to the other prisoner, the one who saw  Elaivani with the girl. 

After some time studying the reports, both at the rehabilitation facility and the statements Elaivani himself gave upon arrival on Water, Ryumeud preferred to approach with caution. It didn’t seem prudent to leave the ship where it could be found too easily and certainly not without weapons on his person. Before leaving his ship, he strapped on a pistol, arranged a few other tools of his profession on his belt, and pulled a mask over the lower half of his face, leaving his eyes and height to broadcast his otherworldly nature.

Disembarking from the ship, he directed the ship’s artificial intelligence to pilot to the top of the mountain in the distance. He watched the door in the reflective surface slide into place, leaving no visible seam. Even if some enterprising human climbed to its location, they wouldn’t be able to enter. Humming tunelessly to himself, Ryumeud followed the path the short distance to the banner-draped little town.

At his approach, the gates that stood wide open before slammed shut and a pair of guards peered down at him from the top of the wall.

“What is your business here?” one called, the scruffy brown hair that peeked around the edges of his mask giving evidence to the lingering kinship between humans and their animal ancestors.

“You are law enforcement?” Ryumeud asked, the trade language of Earth vibrating his tongue and teeth in a harsh, nearly forgotten way. “I’ve come for a fugitive and hostage from my world.”

The two guards stopped to converse in hushed voices with each other, deciding on a course of action. One disappeared from view on the other side of the wall. It wasn’t as though they could keep him out, but Ryumeud preferred not to complicate things more than necessary. Finally, the fur-faced man turned back to him.

“Wait there, we’ve sent word to our mayor,” he said. At first unfamiliar with the term, Ryumeud paused to search his memories, and remembered that is was like a chief of a town. This must be a trading hub of some repute.

“What is the name of this place?” he asked the guard. “I’ve just arrived and I don’t remember the name of your town.”

The guard puffed up with pride.

“You stand outside the jewel of the world, the greatest of cities, the first since Before,” he said. “This is Cradle’s Edge.”

It had grown since the last time he was here. There was a jab in the guard’s statement, a not-too-subtle reminder that his own people were the cause of humanity’s decline. Ryumeud let it go. He had more pressing matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Samhain. May the souls visiting you bring fond memories. ;)


	6. Chains of the Past

Chapter 5: Chains of the Past

“Trade you a song for that wedge of cheese? No? I can see you’re a skilled haggler—a song and a story then. Best deal I can offer just for you, my friend.”

–Ford Deere, Storyteller

Brary bit into a roasted ear of corn he’d purchased from one of the food vendors lining the streets near the warehouses in Cradle’s Edge. He didn’t need to buy food as a general rule with his experience as a hunter and forager, but it helped him blend in among the free workers in the area resting for a meal in the hottest part of the day, and he’d spent more of his time lately inside the city walls than outside. That forced him to spend fochs instead of hunting in the wild areas beyond the gates. Settling on an overturned barrel across the street, he pretended to focus on his meal while keeping an eye on the warehouse belonging to Solstice Valmonde.

The building was big enough to provide housing for several families. A series of wagons hitched to horses waited in front of the wide doors while a dozen people loaded crates, baskets, and barrels into the beds—slaves, if the branding on their arms was any indication. Only half of them were fully human—those with O’stari blood were preferred for their physical strength and size; they fetched a higher price in the slave market.

The wagon drivers wore armor and an assortment of weapons—crossbows, slings, and a few stone-tipped spears. Unlike the slaves in the warehouse, they looked better fed, with rounder cheeks and brighter eyes. Hired hands, possibly Solstice’s own, or maybe from a separate merchant selling the services of an armed transport to distant towns where the goods could be sold at a greater profit. All of it suggested Solstice had more wealth and power as a single individual than even many spark priest temples. He didn’t seem interested in holding any political office despite his involvement with Earth’s Wall. Perhaps he preferred to be a power in the shadows, the unseen hand of an economic force controlling the lives of other people without their knowledge.

After gnawing the last of the kernels, Brary tossed the corn cob into one of piles of refuse that littered the street. Time to get a little closer.

He strolled nearby and kept his eyes wandering, not lingering on any one person or any of the wagons. The contents were not visible, so he couldn’t determine much from what was being traded, but a pungent odor wafted to his nose. Dye-stuffs, perhaps? Mostly the workers didn’t seem to notice him at all. He was just another pedestrian walking among the others on the street.

The horses’ glossy dark coats shone in the sun and shades covered their eyes to protect them from glare and to keep them calm in the bustle of the city. Those were pampered animals, and probably more valuable than the slaves.

Shortly after he passed by, a man with a still-red brand on his arm tripped over the cobblestones, dropping a clay vessel in the street and sending its contents—a brownish splash of concentrated stale urine—spilling into the street. The overseer, a large man who Brary suspected might also have O’stari ancestry, pulled the slave aside and tied him to a post near the warehouse door before drawing a flogger from his belt. That wasn’t good.

Before the overseer could raise his arm to strike, Brary rushed forward and grabbed the weapon in his hand.

“Hold,” he said. “Your slave did nothing wrong.”

“He just wasted thirty fochs,” the overseer rumbled. “That price must come from his hide.”

Thinking quickly, Brary spoke again. “It was my fault. I will purchase the container.”

The overseer gave him an incredulous look. Brary had been several paces away from the slave when the jar fell.

“Thirty fochs, you said.” Before the man had a chance to respond, Brary took a handful of the plastic chips out of the pouch on his belt and counted out thirty, then an extra five.

“For your trouble,” he explained. Sometimes a little bribery could go a long way. It was enough to get someone a little drunk at the end of the night, but not enough to trigger any alarm in the mind of someone loyal to their employer, if the overseer wasn’t also property. Brary had seen that before; owners creating artificial class divisions between their slaves to encourage envy in the lowest among them and pride in those above. In the end they all belonged to a master with a rotten soul, but the divisions kept them all in line.

The overseer regarded the fochs for a moment, mentally tallying the amount. Or maybe deciding whether to overlook Brary’s obvious lie. Perhaps it wasn’t worth quarreling with a free man over a slave that he’d get future opportunities to punish. He pocketed the money and untied the slave, who shot Brary a furtive glance of thanks, before returning to work loading the wagons.

Brary nodded to the overseer and continued on his way. Removing Solstice from existence would be a mercy.

* * *

First came the folding table, the baskets shoved to the side so they didn’t get dirty on the bare ground. Once the table was set into place, the baskets were set on top. Last was the tent, a costly temporary shelter  constructed of sturdy  wooden timbers that held the thick  w ool cloth that would  p rotect the priests and their supplies from the sun. 

Queen spotted only a few flat, wispy clouds low in the sky and a yellow sun midway to its zenith. Patches of dirt shimmered with the dew left over from the night before and the air was cool, but it would soon grow too warm to be comfortable without shade.

Following Kyleen’s directions, Queen tapped metal spikes with anchor lines slipped through their eye holes, sinking them into the ground around the tent. She watched the other two spark priests adjust the poles, then tie the cloth in place. Finally, Rite opened the flaps and tied them back, an open invitation for the unwell in the city to step inside.

They didn’t have to wait long for their first visitor, an older woman with yellowed teeth and sores on her feet.  She shuffled in, carrying a sack filled with grains—a mix of millet and wheat—as payment for treatment. Queen watched over Rite’s shoulder as he cleaned the wounds with a solution from one of the many bottles and wrapped them. She made a face  at the smell ; the solution and Rite’s  skill with the bandage would help with the infection . The old woman smiled at her and waved before hobbling out of the tent.

A short while later, a couple arrived with their two children and small purses full of fochs. They were all perfectly healthy, but they came for the “magical tattoos” that would keep the two boys from getting sick in the future. The money they presented in exchange was a fair price for a full set for each of the children, but it was a vast amount to be carrying around so casually.

Queen wasn’t yet trained in how to apply the vaccine tattoos, but when a familiar man with a red- rimmed wound on his hand, Kyleen pushed her toward him with a basket of gauze and disinfectants.  He presented only a few small, w rinkly apples  in exchange . Queen looked up  into her father’ s face , but he  stared blankly at the  little  stranger under the cap and mask .  There wasn’t even a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

It had been nearly a year since her parents sold her to a group of slavers to be traded away to a brothel or  some market somewhere ; it was only her good fortune to meet Eleven that delivered her to the temple. The prickl e  of tears threatening to fall had her blinking rapidly while she kept her head down to examine the wound.  _ Say something, _ she thought, whether to him or herself she didn’t know. Was she so worthless to her parents that they’d forgotten her?

A flush of anger set her blood on fire.  The infection  might kill him if left untreated; it would be so easy to use just a painkiller without properly cleaning it. So tempting. Eleven’s words  about the weight of a life  returned to her.  The seconds ticked by while she stared down at the offending hand in her lap.  Her father said nothing, trusting her to do the work of a spark priest.  She took a breath, a moment to think.

Queen poured the disinfectant  out  on a clean cloth and dabbed at the wounds. Once cleaned, she  blended a healing paste of herbs and honey, smeared it on the wound, then wrapped it in layers of gauze. With only a couple of mute gestures, she took the apples and sent him on his way,  avoiding  his gaze as she did so .

* * *

Ryumeud  altered his steps to match the guard escorting him through the city.  Unlike  those at the gate, this man w ore metal armor polished to a dull shine.  He was older, too, showing the signs of aging that would never touch Ryumeud in the faint wisps of silver in his fox-brown waves.  What had he said his name was?  Tusayan? That’s right. 

The citizens of Cradle’s Edge parted around them like water, the sight of the tops of their heads giving the impression of wading through a party of children.

Tusayan rambled on as they walked.

“ Over there are the lodge-houses,”  he  said, gesturing down one of the streets as they passed. “Mostly it’s traveling merchants that use them, so the place is fairly secure  and  well-patrolled at night.”

Ryumeud had no intention of sleeping in a bed where any number of parasite-ridden humans may ha d slept before. It sounded like a great way to  catch some kind of alien fleas.

“ That’s the arena,” his guide  said  as he stopped and pointed to the large, banner-draped structure. “In case you’re interested in some entertainment while you’re here.”

A woman pulled a child back from running into their path and stared at Ryumeud with open distrust. The little boy in her arms, just now noticing the O’stari visitor to their city ,  gave a shy smile and  then  hid his face in the woman’s hair.  Tusayan gave no outward indication that he noticed the pair, or any of the other nervou s eyes looking their way .  The city  was a dump, but Ryumeud could respect the man’s professionalism. It was a curious thing that he hadn’t mentioned the obvious, like it was  a secret. Perhaps an oddity of human culture. 

“I expected an adverse reaction to my presence,” Ryumeud said at last, interrupting Tusayan’s explanation of the different events held at the arena. “No one has attacked me yet. Why?”

“ You’re not the first O’stari to make regular visits here, though it’ s been a while ,” Tusayan replied. Then he gestured toward collection of dilapidated houses and winding streets on the south eastern side of the arena. “That’s  B eggar’s  T own. It’s a bad neighborhood, lots of crime.”

Ryumeud scoffed. It wasn’t like the humans would be any threat to him. But it was kind of  Tusayan to warn him anyway. 

“Who else came here?” he asked.  M any of the gawking townspeople returned to their own tasks, pretending to ignore the alien among them,  yet  keeping a wary distance all the same.

“I don’t know his name, but I think he lived at Shade’s Respite,” Tusayan responded. “Disappeared about twenty years ago. I saw him in the city only rarely, back when I was on wall duty.”

They continued on until they reached the gate in the tall metal fence surrounding a large building.  It stood at the center of a garden  boasting several different species of trees.  Tusayan hesitated.

“Something wrong?” Ryumeud asked.

“You should keep your eyes open for Earth’s Wall,” he admitted at last.

“I saw no walls on arrival except the one surrounding your town.” Ryumeud kept his face impassive.

“No, not a physical wall,” Tusayan corrected with a shake of his head. He lowered his voice. “They really don’t like people with O’stari blood. Usually they limit themselves to speeches—at least they don’t let anything tie them to a crime—but there are rumors that they are trying to wipe out anyone not completely human.”

_Ah, a hate group._ One tolerated by the local authorities. He should have expected that.

“Thank you for the warning.” Ryumeud gave his curt reply before the gate opened from the inside and he was escorted through the grounds of the mayor’s house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive the errors that must be in the text. It's been a long day. :/


	7. Negotiations

Chapter 6: Negotiations

“People in town no longer react to Miedabe’s presence with fear. I think we’re making real progress.”

–Waffle Route, Intermediary

Conan drummed his fingers against the metal front of the workbench he leaned against. Like so many other things in the launch facility, it had been built by the spark priests. The rhythm of his tapping digits and the hollow sound they produced helped calm his mind. What was he even going to do with an O’stari? His parents used to tell him stories about the war, about the gargantuan aliens and their brutal battle tactics. Now he was stuck with keeping Elaivani secure while unable to quell the suspicion that the alien was a far greater threat than he let on.   
Before the world faced a common enemy, people fought each other over countless small grievances, any lifestyle that conflicted with the “norm”. What even is normal anyway? And now he had to treat an O’stari man with fairness while restricting his freedom.

Zanna seemed alright. At least she hadn’t gotten into a fight with one of the spark priests on the first day. Amarice vouched for her, and Conan had no problems trusting the scavenger’s judgement. And Zanna was a child of Earth, even with her half-alien heritage.

The meditative noise of Conan’s twitching hand was interrupted by a soft knocking. Nora appeared in the doorway, her grin wide and puckish.

“The shuttle landed safely,” she reported without preamble. He hadn’t anticipated that there would be any problems. Even if something went wrong, the combined efforts of the engineers from the sky-cities and the spark priests they’d been training would have seen to fixing it. In fact, if it weren’t for the arrival of Zanna and Elaivani, he might have gotten a good night’s sleep by now.

“There’s a special passenger to see you,” Nora continued. Before Conan could ask the obvious question, she opened the door wider and tossed a writhing mass of champagne-and-earth-brown fur low to the ground into the room.

“Pixie!” Conan stooped to pick up the ferret bouncing across the floor. 

“It took some work to get her approved for a trip down,” Nora explained.

Conan didn’t answer her right away, just babbling nonsense at the  creature . 

“Should I give you a minute?” It was a stressful time for everyone lately. Nora shifted her weight to the other foot and plucked a loose thread from her orange suit, then shrugged before continuing.  “The right word here or there.”

The ferret was a little slimmer than the last time Conan saw her, someone must have put her on a diet. He stroked the fur of his funny little thief, feeling calmer already.

“ Thank you,” he said. “This helps.”

Nora beamed. “I’ll be off then. Alien ships don’t put themselves back together, you know.” It was a sort of a joke, but he wasn’t looking forward to the problems the subject was going to cause him in the near future.

She ducked out of the room and Conan was left alone with his thoughts again. He sank into the seat behind the workbench, running his hand over Pixie’s fur while he waited. Soon the ferret grew bored, or distracted by her new environment, and Conan set her on the floor to explore the shadows under the furniture.

He had only a few minutes of silence before the door opened once again. This time it was Amarice who entered, followed by Zanna and Elaivani.

It would help him to make a decision regarding the alien if he weren’t so unreadable. Or maybe if he ever smiled, just once. But if his years had taught him anything, it was that one could only control their own actions, not those of others.

“You wanted to see us,” Zanna said. She was covered in sweat and dirt. Nora once mentioned that they spent a lot of time sparring. Would she use all this training against the _Baowe Zeo,_ or her fellow people of Earth?

“We need information,” Conan said. “We’ve been operating blind for far too long.”

The alien’s eyebrows rose higher, threatening to fly away like birds. Under different circumstances, Conan might have found his expression funny. Must be sleep deprivation getting to him.

“Ships would be useful, like the one you brought here,” he continued. “And  knowledge contained within  the Archivists, since that will apparently tell us about the  _ Boawe Zeo. _ ”

“We’ve been here almost two months, sitting on our hands,” Elaivani said, his voice rising several decibels with the anger simmering below the surface. “What changed? Why now?”

Honesty would be best, he decided. “There’s not much choice. Our options are work with what we have—which is the two of you—and have a chance of surviving, or hunker down and pretend we’re invisible.”

Elaivani settled in one of the seats in front of the workbench and folded his arms, resting them on his knees. Maybe Conan would have some larger furniture made if he was going to be working with Elaivani instead of keeping him prisoner.

“I need the engineers trained in how to build things like the O’stari,” Conan said, now that the alien appeared cooperative. “Ships, power cells, anything useful for going up against this new threat.”

“And you want me to teach them what I know.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Fine, power cells are very simple. The ships are not, especially for long range travel. We’ll need plans, and a lot of materials.”

“Fair enough.”

“What about me?” Zanna asked. “I don’t know anything about those things.”

“You will go to the other compounds and  connect with the Archivists.” Conan popped his knuckles.  It wasn’t as soothing as tapping on the workbench. “Your mission is to collect information on the  _ Baowe Ze _ _ o. _ Where they’ve been already, any vulnerabilities, what they look like. All of that is stuff you should look for.”  
“No,” Elaivani  said . “ Th e compounds are dangerous  without an O’stari living there . I want to go with her.”  
“It’s okay,” Zanna said. “I’ll have my Archivist.”

“What?” Conan asked. He must be missing something. “You have one already?”

“Yes.” She cocked head and frowned. “And it wants to know if you would like a copy of Earth’s records from Before. Something about taking it out of an _internet._ ”

“Oh, well yes. That would be helpful.” What could he even say to that? “How does having your own Archivist work?”

Elaivani sighed. So that was information he didn’t want to share. Good to know.

“It’s a collection of nanites, controlled by a single artificial intelligence, that bonds with a host and keeps records,” he explained. “It can also be used as a teaching assistant.”

“So why can’t you teach the others how to build things?” Conan directed his question at Zanna.

“I’m still learning,” she said. “Also Archivist says that it doesn’t have all the plans for the ships. That was stored at another compound northeast of here.”

“It’s settled then.” It was always much better to convince others to work with him because it was the best choice. But he could see the stiffness in Elaivani’s posture, his crossed arms, and his sour expression. The alien was going to fight him about this; it was just a question of how direct the conflict would be.

“I don’t like it,” Elaivani grumbled. “At least let me teach her how to fly the ship so she can get to the compounds faster. She’d be safe from bandits and slavers that way, too.”

“Uh, about that,” Conan said, squashing down the urge to squirm as he delivered the bad news. “We took it apart to figure out how it worked.”

“You what?” By now the alien was glaring at him with murder in his eyes. Zanna put a hand on Elaivani’s arm. As a comforting gesture or to hold him back from leaping over the workbench at him, Conan couldn’t be sure.

“Now we’re having trouble getting it back together, that’s why we needed plans.” Pixie thumped against his feet, tiny claws scrabbling at the leather of his boots.

“I’ll go and get the plans,” Zanna said. “Then no more restrictions on where we can go. Deal?”

Conan raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected her to take the lead in negotiation, especially over a ship she didn’t own and didn’t know how to fly. Scratching under his chin, he ignored Elaivani in favor of the true power between the pair of them.

“Deal,” he said at last. It was a risk, but if Elaivani proved valuable as a teacher to the other engineers and Zanna brought back good information, it was worth it.

* * *

Queen was quiet for the ride back to the temple. They’d stayed outside the city for two days, laboring over broken bones, torn flesh, and infections of all kinds. At the end they were low on supplies and the wagon loaded up with the goods the citizens of Cradle’s Edge traded for healing. Some of it was food and cloth, some of it was the raw materials to craft other things the priests couldn’t make for themselves, metals and plastic fochs, some of which Rite took in the afternoon of the second day into the marketplace and returned with a water still and a small container filled with instruments to be sterilized at the temple for later use.

The donkeys moved a little slower, leaving time for her to dwell on her memories. How could her father not know her? Her eyes prickled again, but she held back the tears. She didn’t want to waste the water.

When they arrived at the temple, deep purple streaks with frills of pink and orange painted the sky. Kyleen handed the animals off to one of the junior priests for feeding and grooming while Rite and Queen unloaded the wagon. The temple also had a mule, a faster animal reserved for messages delivered between temples. But there were three of them in the stable when she passed by with an armload of the raw fabric to be made into bandages.

The slender woman removing the saddle and bags from the mule wore a white tabbard with the pale blue outline of a bird on the front. Unlike the fitted masks worn by the priests from Queen’s home temple, designed to protect against infections, the visiting messenger only wore a simple dust veil in the pale tan color like the sand of the desert around them. She waved a leather-gloved hand at Queen in greeting, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the edges.

The wagon was nearly empty when the tinny clang of the dinner bell rang. Kyleen and Rite quickened their movements, eager to be done with the day’s chores. Queen helped carry everything they passed to her and in a short while it was finished. Time to wash their hands and faces before entering the communal dining hall where beeswax candles cast an inviting glow.

Queen took her place in line for a plateful of the evening meal prepared by the spark priests on kitchen duty for the day—a salad made from vegetables from the garden decorated with a scattering of flower petals and berries, roasted quail glazed with honey and herbs, and a square of cornbread, also sweetened with honey. Eleven had promised that she’d never go hungry again, and that was true; she’d never eaten so well in all her years of living in Beggar’s Town. But it made her a little sad, too. It was only a twist of fate that she wasn’t still starving in the crime-ridden slum. What made her any more deserving than the other people who lived there?

With these heavy thoughts she took her plate and sat at her customary place next to Master Day, who hadn’t started eating without the last three members of her temple present. The Blue Bird priest also sat at the table, on Day’s other side. She’d removed her dust veil to reveal full lips and an unlined face. Queen studied her between bites, her curiosity piqued about her purpose for being there, but silence was the rule at mealtimes.   
It was meant for reflection on the larger interactions of living things, all the many elements that had to be brought together to make a meal and the effects food on the body—the health of the land which nourished the plants, and in turn the body which served the community. That was Master Day’s refrain, spoken often as a reminder. So Queen said nothing, holding her questions for the right time as she was taught.


	8. How the Other Half Lives

Chapter 7: How the Other Half Lives

“Towering wealth and wretched poverty. They might seem like opposites, but that’s just an illusion—without one the other doesn’t exist.”

–Snyder Quik, Temple of the Blue Bird Adept

Brary stood outside the large house near the center of the city. The stuccoed walls were tinted a delicate shade of orange-pink, like sunsets in winter. The building could house several families comfortably, built one layer atop another, with a widow’s walk on the roof overlooking the garden, which was surrounded by a short stone and mortar wall. On the ground floor a wrap around porch hugged the structure, with decorative woodwork framing the windows and doors.

Overall, it was an imposing view that made him uneasy. If he made a mistake going after Solstice, there wouldn’t be anyone to hold a funeral for him. He had no close family remaining and Zanna vanished like a ghost with sunrise. If he went missing, no one would know. Brary walked to the east side of the grounds for a better view of the place.

An orchard soaked up the sun on the southeast corner. Yellow fruits hung between the shiny, dark green leaves.

Lemon trees.  
It must cost a fortune in fochs just to keep them watered. While Brary couldn’t see anyone moving among the trees, the distant sound of a shovel digging in the dirt reached his ears. He continued moving to see the back of the house.

A collection of squat, mudbrick houses with clotheslines strung between them stood in sharp contrast to the opulence of the main house. In the center of the hovels stood a sturdy pillar, made of stone similar to the wall. Near the top was a thick iron ring affixed to the band around the pillar. Streaks of rust stained its length. A few more of them were placed waist-high.

A whipping post.

Except for the laundry hanging to dry, there was little else to indicate anyone had been here recently. The smaller buildings were obviously slaves’ quarters, but empty at the moment. Busy working elsewhere.

He finished circling the house and grounds. On the western side, several people with branded skin and O’stari features labored beneath the sun, tending another section of the garden shielded from view from where he started watching the place.

Brary didn’t stay to observe them long. Instead he returned to the front of the house to continue his vigil. If he could learn the patterns of the comings and goings, he could determine the best time to strike when Solstice was at his most vulnerable. Brary found a rain barrel across the street to sit beside like an ordinary beggar on the street. Good thing he hadn’t bathed in a while.

It wasn’t long before the master of the house himself made an appearance. Solstice was younger than Brary expected, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. More surprising than that, Brary had seen him nearly a year before near the market square, he was sure of it. It was the same night the mill burned nearly to the ground and Zanna disappeared from his life forever.

* * *

Ryumeud sat across from the mayor of Cradle’s Edge, an older man with a round belly and false teeth that lent a humming quality to his speech. At the end of the long walk from the street flanked by two nervous guards, Ryumeud was greeted at the door by the man, who introduced himself as Pilot and offered his palms—something the humans did in place of hugging. It was a wonder that the humans managed to have any kind of society at all when they were so unfriendly, holding others literally at a distance where an O’stari would draw them closer.

“I understand you’re here for a fugitive,” Pilot said, ushering him into an elegantly decorated room. It was a space to receive guests, that much was evident.

The mayor gestured for him to sit in a chair near a stained glass window, the colors of the light streaming through the glass clashing unnaturally to Ryumeud’s eyes. Humans and their penchant for  weird art.  The chair was too small to be really comfortable, so Ryumeud let his legs sprawl out in front of him.

“Yes, someone quite dangerous,” Ryumeud said. “And his hostage, an underage girl.”

“Would you like some tea?”  Pilot gestured towards a young woman holding a tray with two  glazed clay cups and a matching teapot. Ryumeud hadn’t expected so polite a reception. 

The woman serving the tea wore clothing of a similar style to the people outside, minus a facial covering, but a metal collar with rings built into it circled her neck. While she poured the hot liquid, the inside of her forearm revealed the pale brand burned into her bronze skin. With practiced hands working on her task, her eyes flitted up at him, star-shaped pupils similar to his own set in an exotic looking face. Ryumeud clenched his fists at his sides. The half-human woman worked in involuntary servitude. 

Forcing his face to relax into a neutral expression, Ryumeud took a sip of the tea. A fragrant steam rose from the cup, the taste somehow cold even as the liquid was hot.

Mint. And something else, some herb native to Earth that he couldn’t name.

“ What should we be  watching for ?”  Pilot asked, returning to the business at hand. 

“Elaivani Lyriebas is O’stari, male, brown hair, dark eyes,” Ryumeud began. The trade language of Earth really didn’t have the necessary words to accurately describe color, but it was the best he had to work with. “Zanna Route is half-human, female, dark brown hair, green eyes.”

“And once you find these two, you’re leaving, yes?” the mayor asked. _So that’s what this cup of tea is about._

“I will have no reason to stay,” Ryumeud said. It hurt nothing to share the information with the person in charge of the backwards little town. “Retrieving both of them is my only purpose here.”

The mayor visibly relaxed.

“And have you decided where you’re staying? If someone spots them in the city, we will know.”

“I’ll be moving around.” Ryumeud frowned. He really didn’t have much of a lead to go on, only his understanding of the way people behave. It was necessary to be a good hunter.

He fished a small device out of his pocket and held it out for the mayor to take. The man cringed a little when it dropped into his palm,  but quickly recovered . It was oblong and about half the length of his little finger with shining lines of turquoise green in a filigreed design on its top and bottom surface.

“You can use that to contact me,” Ryumeud said. “I doubt you’ll have the—” He paused, considering the most polite way of saying that the city guards were poor as dirt and likely incompetent. “—resources necessary to capture Elaivani.”

“ And what crimes are they accused of  s o we know what to expect?” The mayor took a swig from his own cup, wrapping his hands around it to warm them. It was mid-spring, but warmer on Earth than on Water in general. Ryumeud sighed. He’d forgotten how inhospitable Earth’s climate was after a few decades at home. If only he could have started in  autumn .  H ow to explain that his mission wasn’t about punishment in the way the barba ric humans would see it? But they also needed to take the threat seriously.

“Elaivani is a murderer, he’s killed a lot of people,” Ryumeud said, keeping it simple. The tea, at first strange, was pleasant in its own way. “Zanna only helped him escape. As she is not considered an adult by my people, we’re considering her as a hostage in this situation.”

“We will be watching for them then.  For now, I will let the guard- chief know that you’re to be allowed to conduct your business in the city.”

“Thank you.”

The mayor stood to walk him to the door.

“One more thing,” Ryumeud said. “The woman who served the tea. Tell me about her.”

“You like her? I’ll sell her to you if you want. Or you can borrow her while you’re here.”

“ A slave then?” His suspicions were confirmed, but he wanted the man to admit it.

“Well, yes.”  Pilot ’s voice shook a little.  A  glistening of sweat appeared on the mayor’s brow.  He must have hoped that someone with familiar features would put  his alien guest  at ease rather tha n stoke his ire.

“ That’s legal here?” Ryumeud’s  voice  took on a dangerous edge. 

The mayor nodded, gulping air.

“ Alright then,”  Ryumeud said finally  with a wide smile. “It’s just good to know the laws and customs where I’m visiting.  Maybe I’ll  accept your generous offer; she is quite pretty. ”

* * *

Amarice spotted the knot of spark priests bickering over a collection of parts she couldn’t name, but  suspected were from Elaivani’s ship.  Th e older man wearing  a Blue Bird tabbard tr ied unsuccessfully to hold the peace between the others.  Having observed the spark priests’ lively debates before, Amarice wasn’t especially concerned this time. As long as the tools didn’t start flying, everything was fine. 

“I’m pretty sure that piece went with that piece,” the woman in the Captured Water  clothes  said, pointing to two completely separate  pieces of junk . Thin scars, like fingers or tree branches bloomed across her neck and vanished under her clothes. Her voice was small  and unobtrusive like the rest of her.  T he other spark priests were oblivious to her presence, and didn’t appear to hear her at all. 

“The half-square thing came from the front end, next to the shiny orb,” a man with smudges under his eyes and a yellow stripe on his hard hat declared loudly. “I saw  Sunwest  remove it myself.”

“Why would a Bird do mechanic work? He’d never want to get his hands that dirty. There’s a socket shaped just like it over there,” another man, this one with a green stripe.  He nodded to the older man between them. “No offense.”

Amarice waited. When it appeared that the spark priests were more interested in arguing with each other than listen to her or the  Captured Water priest , Amarice  slipped behind the two arguing men, sat on the floor and  fit the two pieces together, turning them until they clicked into place. She  gave a smirk and a wink to the woman , the only spark priest in the room who had noticed her doing anything at all, then set the assembled parts on the floor. 

“Conan told me to go find Wendy,” Amarice said, standing and dusting her legs. “Are they always like this?”

The other woman rolled her eyes. “Tethered Ball priests. They’re not happy unless they’re fighting at least once daily.” She gestured at the man with gray hair wearing the white and blue tabbard in the middle of the fight. “That’s Wendy, trying to keep them from blows. Again.”

“I was supposed to ask for a volunteer to help me on a scavenging run,” Amarice explained. “You’ve heard about the O’stari man here?”

“Yeah, it’s basically all Certified talks about these days.”

“He’s going to start making power cells and teaching others how to do the same. We need materials.”

“Oh, how exciting,” the spark priest’s eyes glittered. A smile spread across Amarice’s lips at the other woman’s wistful face. “I’d always heard the O’stari had amazing technology for making and storing electricity. I wonder if they’ll let me study with him.”

Amarice studied her for a moment. “What’s your name?” she asked at last.

“Goodwrench. I’m from the  Captured Water  temple near Alliance .”

“I’m Amarice. It’s good to meet you.”


	9. A Forking Road

Chapter 8: A Forking Road

“The accounts of the attacks by the O’stari make them out to be God’s own judgment for the sins of humanity. I think the chroniclers had a guilty conscious.”

–Bryce Chandler, Historian and Teacher, City 9

The day after returning to the temple, Queen rose with the sound of the birds. Remembering the messengers from the other temple, she dressed herself with fumbling fingers and left the small cell where she slept to run to the stable. The mules were still there. Queen continued on her way to the courtyard to begin her morning exercises. It wasn’t long before she heard Master Day’s voice carrying through the stones ethereally.

Unable to resist the whisper of her curiosity, Queen paused her exercises and slinked down the steps to get a better view of the stable.

“—how many did you say again?” Day asked.

“Fourteen have sent a handful of volunteers,” one of the messengers said, tying the veil back on her face. “There’s even at least three temple masters there, one Blue Bird and two Tethered Ball.”

“I’ll send some as well. If they’re doing that kind of work, there’s bound to be accidents.”

“That’s all we ask.” The other messenger took the reins on his mule from the acolyte on stable duty while his partner climbed up into the saddle of her own mount. The Temple of the Blue Bird specialized in all forms of communication. Some of their ranks served for a time as messengers between the temples, carrying small packages or letters when one spark priest in a particular temple needed to confer with a colleague from another over some puzzle of Before beyond their expertise. Others spent their days in their remote temples studying the methods by which the People from Before communicated.

That was interesting, but didn’t fit with her own goals. Every time she saw one of the Blue Bird messengers, a little flutter of hope filled her chest that Eleven had returned and her study would soon change. Master Day was always open about the temple business; she had no doubts that Day would share the message with her soon, she need only to ask.

Day watched the pair of messengers trot their mules through the front gate into the open desert to begin their journey to their next stop. Queen ducked back behind the bushes and crept up the stairs when Day turned to look in her direction. When she reached the open space in the garden, she resumed her exercises, listening for Day’s footfalls on the path.

“I take it you were listening,” the temple master said. Even with her deadpan tone there was a hint of an amusement. She had to scold Queen for being naughty, but that didn’t stop her from finding humor in the girl’s behavior.

Queen held her pose, her eyes sliding sideways to gauge her teacher’s mood. “Maybe,” she admitted. “I didn’t hear everything. What was it about?”

“There is a gathering of different temples. The People from Before have returned, from the sky. They’re asking for more to assist because there is something big coming.”

“What’s that?”

“They don’t know, but they say it’s worse than what the O’stari did.”

Queen mentally chewed on that information. What could possibly be worse? She put it out of her mind, returning her focus to the flow of her exercises. A dampness and uncharacteristic chill lent a weightiness to the air that heralded rain. If it was gentle, it would be a welcome reprieve from the aridity for the plants. If it was excessive, it could cause flooding.

Day watched Queen finish the first sequence, then she took a position next to her student and joined her, their movements echoes of each other, as if the girl was the temple master’s duplicate in miniature.

When the morning’s exercises were finished, Day lead the way back inside the temple.

“Rite and Kyleen told me about your trip to the city,” Day said. “They said you did a good job cleaning and bandaging wounds.”

Queen blushed at the compliment. She didn’t think the other spark priests had been watching her so carefully at the time with the constant stream of visitors to their tent.

“But why did you accept so little in payment?” Day continued. “The salves alone were worth more than a handful of old apples, not counting the bandages and your time.”

“I didn’t want to turn him away,” the girl confessed, trembling. The temple master suspected there was more to it than too much compassion for the needy, and her reaction suggested severe punishments in her past for small mistakes. This hadn’t happened before.

“Sometimes in our work we have to make a hard choice,” Day began, her voice gentle. “And it’s best to put the temple’s needs first for the greater good. When we keep the temple in good repair and our people fed, we are better able to serve those who need our help.”

“It was my father,” Queen said, sniffling. “I thought about not cleaning the wound. I could’ve let him suffer the infection.”

She rubbed away the tears on the heels of her hands, turning her face away to wipe her nose on her shoulder.

“He didn’t even know it was me. But I couldn’t—” she turned pleading, red-rimmed eyes to Day.

Day held her arms open in an invitation, an offer of comfort that had too often been lacking in Queen’s young life. The girl flung herself at the temple master.

“You did the right thing,” Day murmured, smoothing her hair and patting her back. Queen sobbed into her shoulder, finally at home with a family she recognized as truly her own.

* * *

Zanna held a rough map in her hands, a gift from the spark priests. The paper was thick, with deckle edges and small dark flecks in its otherwise cream color. Hemp didn’t grow well where she’d spent her childhood, but it was a common import. The spark priests made their own, from hemp grown in the raised beds around the launch facility, a necessity for their drawings and plans.

While Conan instructed her to go directly to the O’stari compound three weeks walking to the northeast, Elaivani had taken her aside to give her the exact location of his workshop to retrieve his Before-cart. The thought of driving it made her a little nervous, despite her assurances that Archivist was sufficient help for her trip. Having a teacher for how to drive the vehicle would have been nice. But Conan was adamant that Elaivani stay at the launch facility.

Zanna set out the next morning after speaking with Conan, carrying a leather backpack far sturdier than the bag she took to Shade’s Respite so many months before, two canteens, a few tools, dry rations, and a hundred fochs. It was more money than she’d ever had at one time before.

The salt flats were a wide plain of pale sand, tinted faintly blue under the clear sky, stretching to hills in the distance. The sand crunched slightly under her feet while Archivist began a long account of O’stari history, a favorite topic of the machine voice at the moment. Zanna barely paid any attention, falling into the rhythm of her footsteps.

Elaivani’s workshop was much closer than the compound, but it would take her several days out of her way to get there.

When she was around the hill and no longer visible from the launch facility, Zanna looked up at the sun, shading her eyes with her hand, then veered off to the east. If Elaivani was right, it should cut about four weeks off the duration of her journey to go to the workshop first. If she was unlucky and the Before-cart had already been scavenged for any valuables it contained, she would be delayed with nothing more to show for it. But if she could return quicker than anticipated, with a working Before-cart besides, it would help prove her sincerity to Conan.

There was another reason she allowed herself to be convinced—she wasn’t completely sure that Elaivani would be safe by himself. It wasn’t as though she had the impression that Conan or anyone else at the launch facility especially wanted him dead. But there was always a tiny murmur speaking of the fickle nature of people, humans anyway. Her time among the O’stari wasn’t enough to form a full picture of their character beyond their extroversion.

Before leaving she asked Amarice to look out for Elaivani, though she knew her friend didn’t trust him at all. Zanna sighed. It was a relief to get out and be alone with her thoughts. That hadn’t happened for a long time, not since the night Earth’s Wall killed Temaar and burned their house. Alone except for Archivist, that is. With time on her hands, she might as well try to learn something interesting while she was on the move.

“Archivist?” she said aloud. “How do you fly a ship?”

* * *

Ryumeud left the mayor’s home without an escort this time. At least not one that stayed by his side. As he took in the sights of the untamed city, he noticed a pair of familiar faces. Familiar in that he’d seen them before a few streets and turns earlier. The mayor may have given him permission to be in the city for the duration of his investigation, but that didn’t mean he was welcome. He passed by market stalls with their colorful banners and odd goods before making his way to the guard house, following the directions he needed to find Tusayan. The guard-chief so far had been the most helpful person in the stinking, primitive city.

Near the guard house was a larger building. It had a more uniform construction, with a stucco exterior painted on one side with a mural. The unknown artist was skilled, that much was plain to see—the colors melted one to another in a design reminiscent of the late afternoon sky in shades of pink, purple, and orange. It wasn’t the work of a tetrachromat, but still there was talent.

Ryumeud paused to study it, noting the open windows where bored looking men and women sat and tossed inviting smiles to the people on the street. One woman, her back bared in the sun, had black tattoos traced around her shoulder blades and thick dark streaks around her eyes. While the others looked away when he approached, she met his eyes directly.

_At least that is universal,_ he thought with a  twisted  smi le playing on his lips. The woman’s eyes were unsettling and he didn’t linger, instead turning away. It wasn’t shame that propelled him; sex work was common on his home world, just another service that people needed occasionally.  But something about her d ragged him  back to  the memories of when he lived on Earth. 

Something about her reminded him of  Oneida, his daughter . Another life, when he had some hope for the potential of humanity. She’ d never showed her O’stari heritage,  taking after her mother so much she could pass  for fully human,  yet that didn’t save her from a random act of violence .  And he didn’t want to dwell in an unpleasant past.

Ryumeud hurried on, reaching the guard house another street over.  He cast a backwards glance at the two individuals following him and winked before stepping inside the guard house. It was childish, but he couldn’t resist heckling the m a little. 

The inside of the guard house was dimly lit with oil lamps at the darkest corners. _How quaint._ It was a large building compared to its neighbors, so Ryumeud found himself staring down a group of startled guards. He raised his hands to show his palms in an approximation of the standard greeting, or a surrender. 

“I would like to speak with Tusayan,” he said when it became clear that they weren’t going to attack him immediately. “Is he here?”

Tusayan looked out from a room in the back. He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you come back here and we’ll talk?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick edit before posting. All mistakes are mine. Enjoy.


	10. Snares

Chapter 9: Snares

“Leave me where the golden poppies glow; I have died next to you tonight.”

–Wall Xaco, _Beauty’s Kiss_ _,_ verse 43

Brary watched his target leave the opulent home. Where Solstice’s path would take him today was unknown, but it didn’t matter. He’d spent enough time observing. It would be better to make his move while Solstice was at home and his slaves in their cabins on the far side of the property, but he’d take the opportunities fate offered.

Solstice carried a walking stick, an object fashioned out of brilliantly varnished wood instead of the more common metals, decorated with carved animals rendered small cuts and embedded stones polished to a dull shine. Brary held back, pausing to consider his odds. The walking stick would give Solstice a longer reach and Brary preferred to fight up close with his blade if he couldn’t use his crossbow.

The rich man walked  through in the semi-darkness without a care,  oblivious to the hunter stalking his trail ,  strolling from one circle of light  cast by the  oil-fed street lamp s to the next.  Solstice ignored the group of  burly men streaked with grime st anding on the street corner chatting about the day’s events, before winding his way around the woman carrying an armload of mesquite twigs  and a satchel filled to bursting with produce from the market . Brary growled under his breath. This was going to be harder than he thought. 

Solstice made his way to the brothel,  a building that on the exterior looked like an ordinary home belonging to someone of  moderate  means near the main guard house,  and knocked on the door. Brary watched as a slat opened up and  the other man was admitted inside.  A regular customer, then.

Across the street, Brary settled in to wait. When Solstice swayed through the doorway nearly an hour later, the hunter trailed behind him on the return to his house. It wasn’t a long walk; he crossed in front of only a few elegant houses to reach his own door.

A wave of longing for the simpler work of hunting running birds washed over Brary. Once he’d cut the head from Earth’s Wall, perhaps he could go back to the life he used to live. Maybe settle down outside of a town and work as a cooper like Attorney taught him. If he never set foot inside  Cradle’s Edge again, that would suit him just fine.

Solstice walked through the gardens, stopping to admire the night blooming flowers before continuing the wide patrol of the fence line to the dark cabins on the northern side far from view of the street.

Brary crouched next to one of the huts. When his prey was nearly out of his range of sight in the pale luminescence of the moon, he hurried forward, weaving between earth-colored garments hanging to dry on the cord strung between two of the squat buildings. Solstice reached the back door of his home, but hadn’t bothered to turn and look behind himself.

A sliver of light from the open door slide across Brary’s path, but he remained unnoticed as Solstice stepped inside and closed the door with a click of the latch. He waited a count of twenty before trying the door handle. It was unlocked. So careless.

Slow and silent, he turned the handle and slipped inside a warm, spacious kitchen illuminated by the red glow of a dying fire. An iron crane clung to the side of fireplace, decorated with a series of hooks for hanging a soup pot over the coals. A spit lay across the front of the fireplace, with a wooden handle for a slave to turn hunks of meat or whole birds for even roasting.

At the center of the kitchen was a heavy table with cutting boards and assorted pots resting on top. Brary spied to his right an open pantry draped with bundles of dried herbs dangling from strings over the entrance. The inside of the pantry was stuffed full of barrels, clay crocks, and glass jars. He continued on, disinterested.  
From the next room came the constant, barely audible hum of electric lighting. Brary had seen a few lights on display in his time in the city. Some kind of technological marvel wrought by the spark priests, a pretty bauble to show off an excess of wealth and a lack of sense. The fochs it cost just to hire a glazier to make enough glass bulbs for a house of this size would feed a family of six for an entire month. And beyond that, it took a specialist from the Captured Water temples to put the wires in order. Why had someone like Solstice to received such blessings when people like Attorney worked hard for their living and got the prejudice of others for their trouble?

It wasn’t fair, not by a long shot, but he could do something to make the world more just. With Solstice gone, the slaves had a chance to escape, though the brands marking them as property would haunt them their entire lives. Brary hunched low behind the butcher’s block next the table to maintain cover and peered through the open door separating the kitchen from the main room on the other side.

With the silence years of hunting gave him, Brary slipped through the semi-darkness to the next door and peered around the wall. Another fireplace, this one crafted of carved stone in a shade of red-brown nearly as deep as old blood. A room was for entertaining guests. The fireplace sat dark and empty, the charred remains of fires past swept away in an effort to keep the house clean, leaving only a few black smears of soot.

The curtains, made from heavy woven fabric in deep green stood open, exposing the large windows composed of smaller glittering panes, each tinged a different color. Brary felt a small shiver passing by where any stranger might happen to look over and see him as a prowler beyond the glass. The large white moon hung visible through the window, casting pale strips of light across the floor. Rugs woven from separately dyed wool threads covered much of the bare stone floor, masking the sound of Brary’s footsteps.

A staircase lead upward to the second story, where the sleeping chambers waited. Brary crept up the stairs, hugging the wall. From the top of the stairs, he could see the steady glow of light from around the edges of a half-closed door at the end of the hall. He tiptoed to the door before glancing inside.

Solstice lounged on the bed with a leather-bound book in his hands and an electric lamp next to him. He wasn’t dressed for sleeping yet, and didn’t seem to care about getting dirt on the covers as he reclined still in his shoes.

Brary drew his crossbow and loaded a barbed hunting quarrel into it, then with one hand gave the door a gentle push before raising the weapon to point at Solstice.

Solstice lifted his gaze from the book to meet Brary’s own.

“So you’re the one who’s been killing my associates,” he said, too calm. Something about his words unnerved Brary. “You don’t look like so much to cause all this trouble.”

Footsteps sounded from the stairway behind him. The closet door opened, revealing a man in the leather armor of the city guard, brandishing a short sword in one hand and a set of manacles in the other.

It was a trap.

Brary caught an assessing glimpse behind him at the half dozen city guards coming up the stairs, recognizing them as the “common laborers” he’d spotted on the street earlier in the evening. If he shot Solstice, it might be fatal, but he’d never get another quarrel loaded before the guards restrained him. He couldn’t go down the stairs. That made the decision for him.

He took haphazard aim at the guard and pulled the trigger. The bolt whistled through the air, striking the guard in the shoulder deep enough to make him grunt and drop his sword. Brary darted to the window on the other side of the room. Using the stock of his crossbow, he shattered the glass before jumping down onto the rooftop of the ground floor.

Pain blossomed from his back as a knife blade sank through his clothes below his rib cage and dropped away with a dull thunk on the clay tiles. His hand brushed the wound, his fingers coming away bloody. Solstice stood at the broken window, watching him as he slipped off the rooftop and landed with a soft groan. Brary rolled to his feet and hobbled away toward the slave quarters on a twisted ankle, ears straining for the sounds of the guards hurrying through the house behind him.

An alarm bell rang nearby, answered by several more in succession around him, alerting the nearby townspeople to the manhunt in progress. Brary needed to find a way to hide or blend in, before some upstanding citizen reported him to the guards.

The small hovels where the slaves rested at the end of the day were nearly pitch black, with only the tops illuminated by the moon. They didn’t have the luxury of electric lighting, and the inky pools of shadow among them beckoned to the fleeing hunter as a refuge. He pressed his body tight against one of the houses, pausing to catch a breath and examine his injuries.

Brary’s fingers probed at the wound in his back and he grimaced with pain. No one had ever used a thrown blade against him before and it had been more effective than he would have guessed. It wasn’t just a little cut that he could bandage and move on. No, that would require he see a spark priest to get stitched up, but it wouldn’t kill him immediately. He gave his ankle an experimental stretch; a day or two of rest would be sufficient for that to heal.

Brary continued his slow, limping trek to the edge of Solstice’s property, sticking to the shadows of the small dwellings as much as possible. The alarm bells continued their raucous alarm; between the chimes, the heavy footsteps of the guards reached his ears. He strained to breath, not from the damage to his body, but because of the state of his mind; it was only a matter of time before the guards caught him. And then he’d be put on a mockery of a trial that would see him swinging from the end of a hangman’s rope. Justice in a city so corrupt was impossible.

Grunting through the pain, he stumbled through the dark. From the shadow of one of the doorways, a slim man motioned for him to get inside. He was tall, and the moonlight accentuated the ridges of bone around his eye sockets that suggested an alien heritage. With no good options in front of him, Brary hobbled into the hut and the stranger shut the door behind him.

“Quickly now,” the slave said as he flung a shabby reed matoff the metal plates of a trap door. “No one will look for the root cellar.”

Brary accepted the helping arm to support him as he clambered down the narrow steps into the dank, earthen room. Finding a clear spot between hanging onion braids and rough stoneware crocks, he rested a little, but couldn’t relax. The reed mat gave a muted scrapping sound as the slave covered the root cellar door, leaving him in utter darkness. His ears strained for the sounds of the guards searching for him, and he could hear distorted sounds coming through the vents, but it was impossible to determine their distance or direction. He forced his breathing to slow; it was too loud to his ears.

More voices reached him and a thin light appeared through the cracks of the trap door. The slave spoke in a low murmur, and Brary wondered for a moment if the man had simply trapped him to offer him up to the guards later. But the light vanished, and he heard the outer door to the cabinshut.

He was left waiting in the dark once more, without an end in sight. After an eternity of controlled breathing and the throbbing pain in his back, the voices subsided. When it was clear that the guards had moved away from the area, the mat was pulled back once more and the trap door lifted, the faint light offering Brary a silhouette of the man who saved his life.

“They’re gone now,” the slave said. “You’re the one that’s been killing Earth’s Wall?”

Brary nodded. There was no point in lying.

The slave smiled, a rare expression in someone living is such wretched circumstances. His teeth were perfectly aligned. “My name is Logan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, all mistakes are my own.


	12. Separate Paths

Chapter 10: Separate Paths

“Meat on a—no, I don’t know what kind. Meat on a stick, just one foch!”

–Food Merchant at the Arena in Cradle’s Edge

The spark priests didn’t include much detail that wasn’t the route Zanna needed to take to the other O’stari compound on the map they gave her. She couldn’t fault them for obeying Conan; they didn’t know that Elaivani made another suggestion to her when the meeting was finished. Too bad they were still at odds.

“The human is smart,” Archivist chimed in, “but between them, my bet in on Elaivani.”

“Growing attached, are you?” She didn’t fight the urge to tease the machine voice.

“Not in the slightest. He should have been left in rehabilitation for the safety of all.”

Zanna chewed her lip as she contemplated the map stretched between her hands. The workshop should be nearby, but she didn’t get a good look at the area the last time due to an inability to turn her head while paralyzed. Not to mention approaching from a different direction. She shivered at the uncomfortable memories. A strange approximation of a giant, pink lizard creature held aloft a sign welcoming visitors to “Vernal, Utah’s Dinosaur Land” less than an hour behind her. The Before statue was exactly as Elaivani described, so where was the workshop?

A hill rose up in front of her, the side covered with rocks mostly worn into a rounded shape by landslides and blowing sand. The tangled remains of gray, dried out stumps littered the hill, their twisted roots exposed to the elements and riddled with holes from many creatures. The sand and gravel under her feet shifted with each step as she climbed hill, groping for uneven sprouting clumps of long grass to help steady her bent frame.

Once at the top of the hill, further evidence of the remains of an old forest came into view along the other side and extending to the rolling horizon. At some time in the distant past, the area was a forest, but it had been cut down in its entirety, with only the weeds and grasses in its place.

Shielding her eyes from the piercing glare of the sun that hadn’t yet climbed to the highest point in the sky, she paused to straighten her back with a soft groan. Between the barren hills a small green stand of trees sprouted in the depression in the earth where the crease of the hills came to an end.

Zanna checked her canteen. The greenery meant water, if she could get to it. She skidded down the other side of the hill, sending small rocks bounding down below.

Upon closer inspection, there was something strange about the trees. None of them were very tall, many only about double her own height. They were some type of conifer, with short needles that came to a gentle point and crowned with oddly flat-looking cones.

“What are they?” Zanna asked out loud, running a hand along the soft bristles.

“They’re a modified form of a native species,” Archivist supplied. “Giant redwoods, humans called them, genetically altered to survive present conditions on Earth. They will not grow to more than a quarter of the height of the original trees.”

She blinked again. There was something about how they were placed that didn’t seem natural.

“The layout is similar to the memory tree labyrinth on Water,” she murmured.

“Correct,” came the machine voice in her head. “This is a funerary planting. Unlike memory trees, these will not grow together, but they will become a mature forest with time and favorable conditions.”

Zanna descended the hill, leaving long prints in the side where the pebbles slid away under her feet. The branches swayed in the wind over her head as she passed under them. Previous fires in the area were evident in the swaths of charred ground, but the trees themselves had only healthy bark along their trunks.

“They are quite fire resistant,” Archivist remarked at her observation. “The saplings survive best when there are forest fires to clear away the competing vegetation on the ground. It’s a feature unique to Earth. No species on Water requires regular burning to live.”

Beyond the young forest, she came to a building large enough to house the ship in it’s floor. From her hazy memories after so many months, she found the ragged, cloth topped vehicle on the other side of the workshop where Elaivani had left it.

The gravel crunched under her feet when she approached.

“You might want to check for scorpions,” Archivist warned. “It’s been an open shelter for some time now.”

Zanna inspected the Before-cart, breaking a stick off one of the scrub bushes nearby to poke at the wheel wells before checking the dark crevices under the seats and around the steering column. It wasn’t the most pleasant of tasks, but she had experience removing snakes from the chicken house when she lived with Temaar.

Curled in the shadows under the steering wheel was a snake with distinctive pale brown diamond shapes along its back leading into the black and white patterns of the tail that ended in a rattle. It gave a warning shake of its tail when it noticed her, cocking its body in preparation to strike.

Zanna backed away from the door of the vehicle, flipping the stick in her hand to make easier use of the Y-shaped end where the other branches had broken off.

“I can help you resist the effects of the venom,” Archivist informed her, “but it could be a serious problem without proper medical care.”

“I know,” Zanna said out loud. “I guess I’ll just have to work at not getting bitten.”

Rattlesnakes could be fast, but if she was careful about it, she could remove it without harm to either of them. She broke a branch from another bush to help distract the animal.

Leading with the one in her left hand to get the snake’s attention, Zanna brought her right hand up into position. The snake rattled again, then struck out at her left hand, which she pulled back just in time before slamming the stick in the right hand down around the long, sinuous body, and scooping the animal up on the Y in the stick.

Zanna dangled the snake out in front of her while it glared, its black forked tongue sliding out to taste the air.

“Just stay calm,” she muttered. “I’m just going to put you over there and then you can be on your way.” She gave the stick a little shake to toss the snake into the bushes and backed away. With that unpleasantness finished, she was free to examine the vehicle further.

Without the distraction of an angry snake in the floorboards, Zanna popped the hood open with Archivist’s help in locating the release. Looking through her eyes, the machine voice explained the parts, highlighting each one with hallucinations of colors as it spoke. Inspection yielding a satisfactory result, Zanna climbed into the driver’s seat to examine the dash and the many readouts and controls it contained.

“That is the ignition,” Archivist said. The button on the steering wheel and the switch on the dash glowed faintly to her vision for a moment before fading. “It requires both, but you may need to hotwire it, depending on how he modified the vehicle.”

Zanna flipped the switch, then pressed the button, but only silence answered her.

“It was worth trying,” she said. Why would it be easy?

“Alright, get out of the vehicle.” Zanna did as Archivist suggested. “There is a compartment under the steering wheel.”

It glowed, like other parts Archivist wanted to bring to her attention. She pulled at the latch until the compartment door lowered, revealing a tiny, neatly coiled bundle of wires and a fitted set of connectors hanging loose.

“Ah, that’s what he did,” Archivist said. “Those to pieces fit together. It’s a break in a circuit, probably to prevent people from figuring out that it was a working machine.”

Once Zanna sank one of the connector pieces into the other and tried the ignition again, the engine rumbled to life, illuminating the shapes on the dash.

“Now comes the hard part,” the machine voice said. “Teaching you to drive.”

* * *

Amarice dropped another piece of piece of plastic she had been eyeing. In her old life as an independent scavenger selling her finds to Taco Jack, it would have been valuable. It hadn’t been all that long ago, yet it was another life entirely. It was strange to her to have the supportive community of spark priests at the launch facility. They let her work towards the common goals doing more or less whatever she pleased, without her supper depending on acquiring the minimum number of fochs to be considered worthy of a place at the table. It was a completely different approach to resource allocation.

This time, she was looking for another kind of item entirely. With Elaivani’s descriptions of the materials needed for making the power cells, she wandered the ruins with Goodwrench following behind her. The spark priest was wordless, even more so than Zanna had been in the early days of their journey to Shade’s Respite, but the tool belt on her slim hips jingled faintly.

“Good to get away from squabbling Tethered Ball priests?” Amarice asked, in an attempt to get the other woman to open up.

Goodwrench gave a shy smile. “Wendy would have sent me anyway.”

“Why? Are you particularly good at finding useful things?”

“I’m the lowest in rank.”

“Oh.” Amarice still wasn’t completely sure how the spark priests determined such things. “Are you new to it, then?”

Goodwrench shook her head, unsuccessfully trying to conceal her disappointment. “I just haven’t been promoted yet.”

_Oops, sore subject._ “What do you like to do in your days off?”

“Days off?” She said the words as if the concept was entirely foreign to her. “We don’t really get those.”

“Well, what is your favorite thing to study?” That should be a safe question.

Goodwrench considered it for a few breaths. “Energy, of course. And flowers.”

“Flowers?” Amarice squeezed herself between a part of Before-carts that looked as though they nearly collided just before stopping where they lay. “Ooh, wires. That should be useful.”

Amarice directed Goodwrench to help pull while she pried open the panel on the Before-cart with her crowbar. It issued a high pitched, metallic squeal, then came free of the ancient vehicle to uncover the inner workings.

“Nice,” Amarice commented with a grin under her dust veil. Copper wire was free for the taking if one knew what to open to find it, but with the plastic coatings the People from Before used on them, it made them less valuable for crafting in general. But it would suit their needs just fine.

Goodwrench held a bag open for Amarice to drop several coils of wire into for the next hour or so. When they’d recovered as much as was convenient to pull apart, they continued their journey further into the ruins.

Elaivani had been very specific in the description of what he needed. Before they left of their expedition for the supply run, he described a building type where the People from Before would gather in large numbers to trade, something called a mall. The particular metal he needed would most likely be in or around these “malls”. To the People from Before, it must have been a rare and valuable thing, but the alien assured them that it was in plentiful supply in space. If they could just get a few ships airborne, sourcing it would be easier, which would in turn help ramp up their production of more ships.

“How did you come to be at the launch facility?” Goodwrench asked.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Amarice began.   
The other woman shrugged. “I’ve got nothing but time now.”

“I found out about the  _Baowe Zeo_ before I knew anything about what Conan was doing,” Amarice said. “I knew Zanna from when we were traveling to Shade’s Respite, but I guess you know all about that by now.”

At Goodwrench’s confused expression, Amarice continued. “You know, the Prophet? The one who sent us?”

The look of dawning understanding spread across Goodwrench’s face. “Oh,” she said. “You were escorting the pilgrim.”

Amarice blinked over her dust veil. “I guess you could say that.”

“ What was Shade’s Respite like?”

“Dark, kind of creepy. Lots of trees, and a disembodied voice that became a parasite living in Zanna.”

They passed by another gasoline store, a large garden of Before-carts, and an imposing building that still boasted smooth stone tiles on its exterior before they found the empty, desolate lot surrounding the mall. Looking into the emptiness of the vast space that Amarice could envision filled with people bartering, a wave of eerie nostalgia for a time she couldn’t experience for herself washed over her, a kind of sadness for the magnificence lost to the grindstone of inevitable fate.

“How will we know the place when we’ve found it?” Goodwrench asked.

“Elaivani told me that it would have a protective metal gate behind the doors.” Amarice frowned, then she pointed at the smaller building across the vast field of the gray stone of Before from the mall.  The decayed remains of a gate with a symmetrical diamond pattern, like a fishing net rendered in steel, was pulled over the exterior glass stained with accumulated dirt and greenery.  “That looks promising.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Just made it. (I'm on the west coast.)


	13. Assistance

Chapter 11: Assistance

“My grandmother used to insist that the will of those about to die is the most potent. What we wish for in the moments before death—a curse or blessing—will always come true. So choose well when you’re on your deathbed.”

–Ford Deere, Storyteller

Ryumeud left the guardhouse, whistling as he walked. Tusayan had been generous with his information, offering insights into the city and the surrounding land. Everything about Shade’s Respite had been redundant or useless superstition. The location of the Twisted Snake temple to the south might prove useful in the future, but the spark priests weren’t high on his list of priorities. From the reports, Ryumeud didn’t expect them to know how to find their prophet, though they were his students. Elaivani was a phantom; Ryumeud’s only hope of find the pair was to focus on tracking Zanna.

The streets were less crowded, the humans finding other things to do in the hottest part of the day. Ryumeud’s work was only beginning and time was short. He hadn’t been given a deadline under which to return Zanna to her family and Elaivani to the rehabilitation facility, but in his previous experience giving a fugitive who didn’t want to be caught more time to muster a defense only made his job harder. If he moved quickly enough, bringing them back would be easier.

When he arrived at the south gate, the guards let him pass without a word. Some of the “plainly dressed townspeople” he’d seen multiple times since leaving the guardhouse peeled away. Not dedicated enough to follow him out into the wilderness. Or perhaps their jurisdiction ended at the city gates. He was almost disappointed. It might have been fun to play with them out where it would be easy to dispose of the bodies.

After walking a short distance outside the city, he called his ship closer, then flew south.

The temple was easy to spot. It was the only sign of human habitation for a long distance around the city. And it was a large building, decorated with a cloth sign that flapped in the breeze bearing the symbol of the order. He might have to pay the spark priests a visit soon, but he would have to be careful. They might not know how to find Elaivani, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t inform him of Ryumeud’s presence at the first opportunity.

Beyond the temple the land dropped away to a chasm where a few rusted and decayed structures built before the war still stood. The chasm extended out further into an expansive canyon, stretching out under the blazing sun and disappearing into the horizon.

The ship descended to the floor of the larger canyon and set down among the spiny, green columns of cacti. Sheltered from the harsh winds and fed from a stream trickling out of the forest nearby, grasses and other plants flourished as well. Honeybees flew from one blossom to the next, delicately soft orange petals of the wild poppies and the bobbing yellow sunbursts of dandelions. If the humans had a proper civilization, Earth might be a nice tourist destination, with its alien plants and insects. Cacti in particular fascinated his people. Many botanists, or just gardening enthusiasts, collected them but they were impossible to grow outdoors on his home planet. Too much rain.

Ryumeud hiked into the woods, taking his weapons and a small bag of tools slung over his shoulder. The trees were more familiar to him, many of them brought in from home to help repair the damaged ecosystems of Earth. The compound was easy to find, all he had to do was reach the center of the small forest.

The building itself, a series of stacked modules arranged in a spiral and supported by beams to provide purchase for the climbing vines to hold onto, was pale against the darkness of the trees. Like most of his people’s constructions, it was made with plant and animal life in mind. The walls themselves were self healing if damaged, and the vines would provide food and shelter for many species of small animals. The plants were crowned with a profusion of flowers in a variety of colors, typical of azure reconciliation vines. They’d been a regular addition to the seed bombs that were dropped on the cities at the end of the war. Not only were they useful, they had long been a symbol of repaired relationships to his people.

Planting them where they’d killed so many struck Ryumeud as trite and shallow for the depth of the harm they’d done to the people of Earth. But that didn’t stop him from making a home on the planet for a while shortly after the war.

Approaching the door to the overgrown compound, he withdrew some of the tools from the bag, then went to work on manually opening the door. The place was overgrown, with a few dark streaks in the pale off-white of the building itself implying that there hadn’t been anyone maintaining it in a long time. There were no lights to greet him, no voice of a resident Archivist, which meant that the power was disconnected. Perhaps some ignorant human had stolen the power cells to use as house ornaments.

Ryumeud opened the door easily, leaving not even a scratch behind to tell of his visit, and entered the dark room beyond. The air was stale and a table rose from the floor in the center of the room, clearly intended for the Archivist to speak to visitors. He didn’t bother to bring a light; between his Archivist and his own natural vision, he didn’t need it.

Beyond the main room on the ground floor, he found the living quarters and the small, but well equipped cloning suite. Miedabe had lived here for a little more than sixty years, tasked with determining what niches needed to be filled on Earth and releasing the appropriate species into the wild.

He looked for more clues that might tell him where to look for Zanna, but didn’t restore power to the Archivist. Since he was an intruder here, he couldn’t risk the artificial intelligence warning Zanna if she returned. There wasn’t a lot it could tell him anyway. If the previous information he’d gathered was accurate, she hadn’t lived here after her toddler years. But her mother died around that time as well.

Ryumeud frowned. That left a missing piece. Who looked after her when her mother was dead and her father had been recalled to Water? Where did she live then? And if she returned to the compound once, she might do so again. That presented an opportunity, though the chances were slim if she called another place home. Cradle’s Edge seemed as likely as any, but that left him with more questions regarding the loyalties of the mayor and guard-chief.

The compound had no more secrets to tell him for the moment. Ryumeud returned to his ship. After retrieving a few devices from the ship, he hid them inside several rooms within the compound and one near the exterior door. If anyone showed up there, he would know.

* * *

Brary accepted the bowl from his host,  the  half-O’stari man with a  perpetually  ben t back and  so many old  scars from the lash that they  resembled a flock of migratory birds in flight. 

“They won’t find you here, but we need to get your wound looked at,” Logan remarked as he crouched in the root cellar in front the sleeping mat he’d set out on the dirt floor. “How do you feel right now?”

“Like I got a knife to the back and then sprained an ankle falling off a roof,” Brary said with a twisted smile.

Logan looked away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend,” he muttered.

“No, no, there’s no offense. I was just—uh—trying to lighten the mood,” Brary stuttered. Why did he feel as though he just kicked a puppy? Talking to people could be so difficult.

He shrugged, then grimaced at the pain the motion caused. “I didn’t want you to worry,” he said sheepishly. “Honestly, it hurts a lot.”

“But no fever?”

“Fever? It’s freezing down here.” It was difficult for Brary to see the other man  by the light of the candle he’d brought down into the root cellar  with the bowl , but he thought he noticed worry lines appearing around his eyes. 

Logan reached out to feel Brary’s forehead.

“That’s not good,” he said after pausing with his hand out. “Let me see your back.”

Brary lifted his shirt away from the gash below his ribs.

“You’ve got a lot of red lines back here,” Logan murmured  as he prodded at the edges of the wound site . “ And it feels hot.  You need  a  healer .”

Brary coughed, wincing at the pain. “I know where the temple is, I just have to get there.”

Logan frowned. “There’s still guards everywhere. But there might be another way.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll be back, just stay put.” Logan climbed the narrow ladder to the main floor of his hovel, leaving Brary with the candle and the bowl full of thin soup. The hunter had nothing to do but wait. He took a sip from the steaming bowl and wrapped up in the blanket a little tighter.   
Could he trust the slave? He didn’t have much choice in the matter, being in no condition to fight his way out if it came to that. The soup helped to warm him, but he shivered uncontrollably all the same.  He continued to drink the broth, but the vegetables floating in it didn’t tempt him at all. 

When the bowl was drained of liquids, he set it down on the bare dirt next to the candle and laid down on his side to stare at the flame. He drifted on the edge of sleep. With his eyes unfocused, the blurry flicker of the light cast wandering shadows across the walls in disturbing visions. Low voices whispered around him, punctuated by a thumping from above. He dosed, only distantly aware of something cold swiping against his back and a sudden sting—

Brary woke  in sweaty, smelly blankets  to a beam of harsh  light  streaming through a crack in the floor outlining the trapdoor.  The candle had melted into a small puddle and the bowl was missing. He sat up, dislodging the extra blanket covering him that hadn’t been there the night before. He listened in the semi-darkness for some sense of what was going on outside. 

The sounds of birds chirping reached him through the floor, only faintly, but enough to know that it was daytime. There were people moving overhead, too. He didn’t dare try to climb out of the cellar to see if the way out was clear.

A thick layer of cloth was tied around his midsection. His hand followed the wrapping around to his back, where a thicker lump of bandages covered the gash.

He didn’t have to wait long, the trapdoor opened and a set of boots with obviously repaired soles descended the rungs.

The  man who appeared in the cellar also had  a  brand on his arm marking him as  someone’s  property. He flashed a toothless  smile that deepened the wrinkles of his face and his black eyes sparkled with a surprising vitality in  someone  so old. 

“ Logan had to work and he didn’t want to give away that there was anything different,” he explained. “So you’re the one everyone is talking about. My name is  Johnston .”

Brary relaxed visibly. The old man was no threat to him.

“Dromat Carrs,” he said, the coughed into his fist. He could drink a whole river dry.

“I know who you are—the scourge of Earth’s Wall. Somehow I thought you’d be taller.” The old man grinned  again with nothing but gums . “I wouldn’t expect someone who wasn’t part O’stari to care so much about us half-breeds.”

“ I knew someone who was half-O’stari,” Brary said. He could at least be honest about that. “More than one, actually. One was a friend, killed by Earth’s Wall.”

Johnston  nodded sagely. “Makes sense.”

“The other was a woman I once hoped to—to have a life with.”

The old man cast pitying eyes on him. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, she’s still alive, I think,” Brary corrected. “They burned her house down, along with her uncle, though. I just don’t know where she is.”

“And you’re searching for her?”

Brary nodded, though he’d given up any hope of finding her. It was a simpler answer than the entire truth.

“I hope you find her then,” Johnston said, standing up from his crouched position to climb the steps. “But for now, you still need to rest and heal.”


	14. Jackpot

Chapter 12: Jackpot

“Where bubbles the water, no moon is reflected.”

–Snyder Quick, Temple of the Blue Bird Adept

The metal grating surrounding the windows of the shop had been reduced mostly to rust in the years since the war. Amarice nodded to Goodwrench before applying her crowbar once again. The flat bars link together at hinges that formed a diamond pattern snapped easily, coming away with a screech and tumbling to the ground.

“Weird that the People from Before used a cheap, fragile metal to protect a more expensive one,” Amarice commented.

“The stuff we’re looking for doesn’t corrode, yes?” Goodwrench asked, confirming. She toed the fallen chunk of rusted steel with her boot. Amarice nodded. “Maybe they didn’t think this through.”

With the exterior security successfully breached, all it took was a quick swing with the crowbar to shatter the dust-worn glass. The tiny shards sprinkled the ground in a shower of sparkles, releasing a cloud of moist air like the yawn of a great beast. Inside the building were displays encased in glass stained with the dirt and decaying plant matter from the vines growing in through a top corner. In sharp contrast to the arid conditions outside, the showroom was filled with moss and leaves, a dark haven away from the harsh sun.

“It’s not sealed to the outside, so we should be safe from any poison still hanging around,” Amarice said.

“Poison? After all this time?”

“It lingers anywhere that the air hasn’t been free to move. Just don’t open anything without me.”

The spark priest nodded, a little paler than she was a minute ago.

The glass shards crunched under their boots as Amarice took the lead and stepped into the shadowy cavern of the showroom. Once inside, their footsteps were muted by the thick moss and sprawling mycelium devouring the old carpet that still showed an inoffensive gray scale pattern. Amarice navigated only by the light streaming in behind them, toes nudging debris as she went to find anything dangerous before it could damage her inexperienced companion.

Lying half submerged on the green floor in front of her was a hand that wore golden rings on it’s fingers. Instead of the bones she would have expected from a normal corpse, this hand had metal claws streaked with a turquoise patina and fragments of cloth hanging from the “bones”.

Amarice squinted at the thing. “The People from Before were completely flesh and blood, right?”

“I think so. I mean, the records I’ve seen imply that they sometimes had machine parts when their own failed them, but I don’t think it was a common practice.”

The scavenger reached to pick up the hand and found that it was attached to a heavy base. It wasn’t even a hand at all, just some kind of sculpture. She took the rings off and pocketed them.

“They wore this as _jewelry_?” Goodwrench asked. 

“It’s kind of ugly, isn’t it?” Amarice examined one of the cases, then brought her crowbar down on the glass before reaching in to pluck the other sparkling baubles out. She wrinkled her nose. “Looks like they preferred bland, colorless stuff. Who could have guessed?”

Goodwrench peered inside the smashed display case and pointed to one of the shining chains. “That one is yellow, and so thin. Must be for poorer people. Which kind are we looking for?”

“Elaivani said platinum was the most important, but gold was useful, too. Just grab everything you can find.”

The two of them went to work clearing out the displays of the metal and colorless stone jewelry. Even emptying the entire showroom, neither of them had a full bag. They worked their way around the room case by case.

“What is that?” Goodwrench asked, pointing to a pitted, circular steel plate mounted in the wall. To a person browsing the showroom, it was concealed behind the rotted remains of a wooden door barely clinging to the corroded hinges. Amarice moved closer to examine it.

“Looks like a security box, just really big,” she said, rubbing her hands together. The possibilities represented in the size of it tickled her scavenger sensibilities. Their loot gathered so far had just been shiny trinkets, but whatever was behind the vault door must be something special.

“Do you know how to open it?” Goodwrench asked.

Amarice grinned. She spread her palms over the surface and pressed her cheek to the solid metal. Her fingers, the bare tips protruding from cutoff gloves for extra sensitivity, drummed on the door. A dial in black and pitted silver metal, with small notches and numbers at intervals, still gleamed in the dim light from above.

“ It’s all about feeling the sounds,” she murmured. Then she turned the dial first one direction, then back.

Grasping the heavy metal handles,  she gave it a sharp jerk. Whatever rust or dirt was keeping the mechanism from moving gave away with an audible snap. 

“Easy,” Amarice said with a wink. She’d never had the opportunity to show off her skills for an audience before. A cute one, at that. The scars along Goodwrench’s neck reached toward her jaw like ghostly branches stripped of leaves, so much more interesting than the tattoo on Amarice’s face.

The shafts of light from the broken door and the holes in the roof illuminated a yellow haze that swirled low to the ground. Goodwrench took a step inside, coughing in the stale air. Amarice cursed, then grabbed her arm and hauled her several steps backward toward the front door.

“What’s wrong?” the spark priest asked.

“ That’s  O’stari poison,” Amarice explained. Her  worried gaze flicked over the other woman even as her voice remained calm .  The noxious clouds would disperse soon, but an initial fit of coughing was the insidious way it infected people further.  “It  was a sealed room. ”

Goodwrench continued to heave dry air. Amarice guided her by her arm to sit outside the jewelry shop  on the ground ,  then sank to the dirt  in a crosslegged pose .

“I don’t think you got very much of it,” she said. “Let’s just stay here for a little bit while you catch your breath.”

“ Why would the People from Before seal up the poison that killed them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they had some hope that they would recover and go back to their normal lives.”

When Goodwrench’s coughing subsided, Amarice stood and brushed the dirt off her pants. Back to the business at hand, since there was no telling what other dangers they could encounter in the ruins and she wanted to ge t out before nightfall.

By the time they returned to the open vault, the poison had dissipated, leaving only normal, breathable air filtering in. The walls on the inside were covered in small doors and drawers in varying states of “put away”. Some hung fully open, with their contents on full display. Sparkling gems, mostly in the white that the People from Before in their bland tastes preferred peeked out from all sides.

Amarice frowned. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but more of the same stuff as the displays in the showroom was somehow disappointing . 

“More of the same,” Goodwrench said, echoing her thoughts. “I really hope it’s enough. How much do we need?”

Amarice shrugged. “Elaivani just said to grab what we can carry, but I’m not staying in the ruins after dark. If he wants more, he can come get it himself.”

The pair of them went to work clearing the vault of the yellow and white metals, dumping all of it into their bags.

* * *

Zanna pressed down on the accelerator, then startled as the Before-cart leaped forward. She pulled her foot off the pedal, slamming on the break and rocking as the vehicle jerked to a stop.

“Breathe,” Archivist said.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Zanna said, with a quick exhalation. “Do they usually respond like that?”  
“Yes, that’s normal. Let’s try again, but steer toward that open space away from the trees, just in case.”

Zanna wasn’t sure she liked the machine-parasite’s implication. “I can do this,” she said to the voice in her head, reassuring herself.

“I’m sure.”

With a slower, more controlled motion, Zanna depressed the pedal again, taking her other foot off the break as the machine eased forward, not too fast.

It was a new challenge, keeping her attention divided between watching where she was going and maintaining even speed as she went, but soon she relaxed into driving. Then it became a source of pleasure rather than stress. A wild sense of freedom came in the vehicle that bounced slightly on the rough landscape, so much faster than she could walk and more predictable than a horse or a mule.

Zanna laughed.

“Yes, yes, very good, you’ve learned to drive,” Archivist said. “Just make sure you don’t leave us stranded in a ditch somewhere. And we need to turn north.”

Glowing lines on the dirt in front of the vehicle appeared, guiding her on a path to the O’stari compound known as the Red Lodge.

“They didn’t program you to understand play?” Zanna teased. “I’m so sorry.”

The machine-voice ignored the jab. “Old highways, even in their advanced state of decay, will probably be smoother and more direct than traveling over natural terrain.”

“How long will this machine work? Does it need anything I should know about?”

“O’stari power cells are a much more durable and efficient fuel than the gasoline used by old Earth combustion engines, or even the most advanced rechargeable batteries your ‘People from Before’ ever created. This machine will run, provided it isn’t damaged in a collision, for many years without maintenance.” Zanna thought she detected a note of pride coming from her symbiont. Did artificial intelligence come with all the flaws of an organic one?

The forest near the workshop spread outward, but it wasn’t very large and Zanna reached reached its north edge in minutes. Beyond that, the remains of an old highway extended to the horizon. As Archivist suggested, she maneuvered the vehicle onto the road, picking up speed as she went. The open design of the cloth top allowed the cool wind to play in her hair as she flew over the bumpy, cracked segments of dark gray Before-stone.

The sun sank lower, bathing the desert in orange light. One of the controls on the dash glowed to her vision. She flipped the switch without asking what it did. Lights flared to life in front of the vehicle, illuminating the road in front of her. Another glowing strip around the switch appeared to her, pulsing to indicate direction. She did as Archivist suggested, turning the switch, which cause the lights to brighten, extending her vision further into the dark.

After a few hours, Zanna grew drowsy and slowed to a stop.

“Any idea where we are?” she asked.

“I estimate that we are less than five hours drive from the Red Lodge,” Archivist replied. “We have already traveled the distance you can walk in about seven days.”

“Really?” Zanna stretched her arms above her head as she got out of the vehicle. “That’s good, right? Elaivani said getting this thing would save a lot of time.”

“ Yes.”  H er parasite  disliked the man she brought back to Earth, but perhaps there was growing respect, too.

She scratched her back, which was coated with sweat against the driver’s seat despite the chill in the spring air. The temperature was still dropping rapidly and Zanna eyed some of the dry twigs on the ground from the drought tolerant shrubs protruding from the sandy soil. She could start a fire, but did she really feel motivated enough to do so? She shrugged, though there was no one there but Archivist to see it. She climbed back into the vehicle, took some dried rations out of her bag to eat. Then she took out the blanket, then used the bag as a pillow before contorting her body into the least uncomfortable position she could for sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all are having a nice holiday season. Happy new year. :)


	15. Nameless Traitor

Chapter 13: Nameless Traitor

“Form may waver, color might fade, but the love of a soul always remains.”

–Wall Xaco, _Beauty’s Kiss_ _,_ verse 51

Solstice took a drink of wine from the elegant crimson glazed cup, gazing through the window out at the slave quarters, something of an eyesore. The drinking vessel was lightweight, crafted by a master potter. Only the finest. He swirled the liquid around the bottom, contemplating the dark burgundy waves in the cup. Grapes didn’t grow well in the hot, dry climate of the area around Cradle’s Edge. He had to import the barrels of wine from a couple month’s travel to the north. He had an agreement with a merchant in Fly-J, trading his dyes for the wine, among other things.

It was only his third—no, fourth—cup. He couldn’t afford a fuzzy mind with a killer on the loose. Perhaps it was time to quit. The soft sound of shuffling feet drew his attention away from the window.

“Hello, father,” he said to the old man, touching his forehead with his fingertips. Solstice might have taken over the family business, including organizing the activities of Earth’s Wall, but the old man was still his dad, still deserving of respect. Still sharp as ever, though he’d gone mostly blind in the year since the Twisted Snake spark priest told him that there was sugar in his urine. Soltice dropped his hand. His father couldn’t see the gesture anymore anyway.

The old man’s nostrils flared. “What’s bothering you?”

His sight may have deserted him, but his hearing and sense of smell had not. Solstice must reek of alcohol.

“The man who attacked me,” Solstice confessed.

The old man snorted. “I know I didn’t raise a weakling.”

Solstice gave a thin smile. “Not him, exactly.”

His father waited for him to continue.

“He was pure human,” Solstice said. “I have no idea why he’s going after our people.”

“Some folks are too stupid to see the danger in front of them.” But that wasn’t exactly the heart of the problem.

Solstice went on. “And no one has been able to find him. I know I hit him. He couldn’t have gotten far without help.”

“You think someone betrayed you.”

Solstice turned his attention to the cluster of mud brick buildings near the edge of his property.

The old man shuffled closer, turning his own clouded gaze out toward the hovels.

“I don’t know why you bother to keep them,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before they do something unfortunate. They can’t help it; it’s in their nature. The night your mother was killed—”

“I know,” Solstice interrupted. His father used to tell the story any time he’d gotten too far into his own cup when Solstice was a child.

The old man fell silent, then slid a hand up on his son’s shoulder. He understood the burden.

“Is there anyone in particular you suspect?” he asked softly. “Someone among the guards?”

“No, that’s the problem. Most of them seem loyal. Those who disagree have done so openly, but have always been willing to do their jobs anyway.”

“Be patient. You have the support of the law on your side. This man who attacked you does not.”

Solstice downed the remains of his wine. To speak his true imaginings would invite his father’s mockery, but he might as well get it over with. “I hope its enough. But I’m wondering if one of the slaves have anything to do with it.”

The old man’s expression turned bitter. “What are you going to do about it? An example must be made if you want them to respect your authority at all.”

It wasn’t quite the response Solstice expected, yet it matched perfectly with the image in his memories of former master of the estate, a man in his prime with bones of iron as the saying went. “It’s not like I can execute all of them.”

“Can’t you? A few less half-breeds in the world might do some good.”

It seemed like such a waste. He would have to start over training new stock, ensure that they were all pure humans. But even pure humans could turn against him, if the man who attacked him was any indication. The hand on his shoulder slipped away.

“You already know my thoughts on the matter,” the old man grumbled. “Now it’s out of my hands. Such is the curse of old age; you come to rely on others to care about your safety.”

Solstice sighed. It was an obvious attempt at manipulation; the old man was slipping as time passed.

His father shuffled away, leaving Solstice to his thoughts, hands searching for the rail of the staircase to go to bed. The sun was still a bright orb high above the horizon; he tired so easily these days. Solstice set his cup down and crossed to the staircase, giving his father the firm support of his forearm to grasp as he helped the old man safely up the stairs. It wouldn’t do to have him fall and injure himself.

After his father was tucked into bed, Solstice went to the closet in the main room downstairs. Opening it, he revealed the usual things—his collection of head coverings and other garments, but also an old leather flail hanging in the back, its tails coated in a thick layer of dust. His father had taught him the techniques of breaking in slaves years ago, but they’d only owned pure humans back then. More reliable, his father had always claimed. The half-O’stari might be physically stronger, but they were invariably more willful than their earthly counterparts. It was just a feature of their alien blood that couldn’t be beaten or bred out of them. Or so his father believed.

Solstice took the flail in hand, giving it an experimental snap to test the suppleness of the tails. The leather was well-oiled and hadn’t cracked in the months of disuse and neglect. He took it with him into the kitchen, where three of the slaves—all of them human—were busy preparing the evening meal. They watched him in silence with wide eyes as he took a rag from his pocket, fetched some oil from the pantry, and began cleaning the weapon in front of them. As if a spell had been broken, they hastily moved to getting the meal prepared, working around him while he sat near the fire.

Perhaps his father was right; his slaves had forgotten to fear him. He would have to rectify that.

* * *

Despite Archivist’s misgivings, Zanna drove the vehicle until late in the morning without crashing into anything larger than the small shrubs growing through the cracked gray road. The thrill of driving had worn away in the hours of bouncing along the old highway. Or perhaps she was beginning to tire from sitting in one position for so long. Soon the landscape turned greener, pale desert giving way to grasslands lush with the light spring rain.

“I recommend parking somewhere nearby and walking the rest of the way,” Archivist said, interrupting the quiet of her mind. “How the local people will react is unknown.”

Zanna continued driving for a few minutes until she spotted the towering arches of a building from Before surrounded by the moldering remains of a handful of Before-carts. A few other remnants of the civilization slowly sank into the landscape with jagged angles projecting through the scraggly trees.

She pulled to a stop, then switched off the ignition. No longer needing Archivist’s guidance on the mechanical operation of the vehicle, she opened the hatch below the steering column and separated the plug that completed the circuit of the ignition. She latched the compartment closed, then grabbed her packed bag from the passenger’s seat, shivering a little in the chill of the air.

The air here was as cool as on Water, but not as humid. She pulled the wrap Rebey had given her out of the bag and draped it over her shoulders before continuing her journey.

Half an hour later, she spied a town. It was smaller than Cradle’s Edge. Probably also smaller than Alliance. The exterior wall rose above her head, with a tall gate tightly closed. It was composed of stones and supported by thick, round pillars of wood. Except on Water, Zanna had never seen so much wood in one place on Earth, and never in such large pieces. She approached the gate, looking to the guards for entry.

“I’m looking for the Red Lodge,” she said, her breath curling wisps of steam in the cold air.

“You’ve nearly found it,” the woman guarding the gate said. She wore a strangely woven shirt in a crosshatching pattern of red and white threads and a hat with fur-lined flaps pulled low on the sides. “The lodge is inside, in the middle of town. You can’t miss it.”

The gate swung open, the wood making an oddly hollow thud behind her after she crossed the threshold. Zanna waved to the guard in thanks and continued on her way.

Inside the gates, several shops stood with “open” signs though their doors were closed. The streets of the town were paved with dark gray slate in rough sheets with more of those wood logs stained nearly black erected along the street and stippled with iron sconces for torches at night. A few short icicles dripped melting water from the slanted rooftops of the buildings lining the street.

Zanna passed by a bakery, the scent of baked goods and some unidentifiable sweetness wafting through the door, which was propped open with a round stone that sat in the entryway like a toad. The heightened appetite that came with Archivist urged her to investigate further.

“Later,” she grumbled, rubbing her belly in response to the sudden hunger pangs. “Let’s find out where I need to go first. I can take a break afterwards.”

She walked the main thoroughfare, observing the trickling crowd around her. While the others clearly noticed her presence and gave her the wide clearance afforded to tall people everywhere, no one seemed especially bothered by her alien heritage. There was no difference in the variety of skin tones and eye colors from other towns she’d visited, but the locals dressed in thick layers favoring all shades of red, giving them the look of being fatter than they actually were. The traveling merchants in the marketplace wore a greater variety of colors, earth tones, shades of blue and green.

Soon Zanna stood before a building in the exact center of town as close as she could tell that soared well above the other rooftops, the eaves curving up to a spire. Her eyes followed the lines up to the point. How did anyone manage to build it in the first place? Like many of the people around her, the building was also dressed in red, from the stain in the wood supports to the pair of flowing banners dropping nearly to the street from the rounded eaves. The sign posted by the blood-colored doors at the top of the steps was a shimmering green with lines of rust trailing from the circular holes at its corners. It read, “Welcome to Red Lodge, pop. 3,782”.

“Not what I was expecting,” Zanna remarked.

“It doesn’t match up to my records of the location,” Archivist admitted, “but my knowledge may be out of date.”

“Great,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I guess we’ll have to ask for directions.”

The door opened, revealing a man wearing an outfit she might have expected in Cradle’s Edge. A traveler, then. He startled at nearly colliding with her, then quickly altered his path to go around as she gawked at the architecture.

Zanna pulled on the thickly braided rope attached to a large brass bell next to the door. A clear peal sounded, resonating in the frame around it in a low drone long after the initial sound ended. She didn’t have to wait long for the door to be opened by a man with a bald head wearing the same red and white crosshatch fabric as the gate guard. He offered her an inviting smile under his full white beard, then stepped back to allow her entry.

“Welcome to the Red Lodge,” he said, stepping aside. Inside the wide main hall, two recesses sank into the floor, each bordered by long couches and the floors covered in woven rugs. Long chandeliers crowned with candles hung suspended with chains from the ceiling. 

“Um, yes. Thank you,” she stammered. “I’m actually looking for directions.”

“Come, come,” he murmured, motioning her inside. “Anything for a guest. Hospitality is the Red Lodge way.”


	16. Cornered

Chapter 14: Cornered

“When stars fall, they are messages from our ancestors.”

–Ford Deere, Storyteller

Brary startled awake to the sound of screams coming from outside. His fever broke the day before and the wound in his back closed under the watchful care of his host. He sat up, flinging the blankets aside. Standing on wobbly legs, he climbed the ladder out of the root cellar and peered through the trap door. Seeing no one, he emerged from the darkness for the first time in nearly two weeks.

The window was just a hole in the wall for ventilation covered in a sheet of some kind of animal horn sliced thin enough to cast a warm glow over the room. Dark shapes stood outside, too indistinct to explain the sounds. But now the screams were punctuated by a slapping sound not unlike that of a laundry worker beating a wet cloth. Sunlight filtering through the horn window and around the cracks in the door informed him that it was daytime, but he couldn’t gather much beyond that.

Brary pressed his face to the one of the small holes in the door, momentarily blinded by the harsh light that brought tears to his eyes. The shirtless man tied to the whipping post he recognized as Logan. Solstice hadn’t delegated the chore of beating slaves to an overseer this time.

The scourge in his hand came down on Logan’s bare back with a loud snap, raising more welts in his skin that filled with blood. The other slaves were gathered, some shielding Logan’s house from view, unconsciously hiding his secret. Some of them cried, covering their children’s eyes and ears to protect them from the horror unfolding in plain sight.

Why were they all being made to watch? It seemed so needlessly cruel, even for a bastard like Solstice.

Brary could end it. His crossbow was still lying among his other possessions in the root cellar. But there would only be one opportunity.

Agonizingly slow while the sounds continued outside, Brary descended the ladder to retrieve his gear. He strapped everything on again, tightening the buckles. He’d lost some weight in his time in Logan’s root cellar, but not enough to weaken him to the point he couldn’t do what was needed.

His grip faltered and shook as he climbed back to the main floor of the cabin and loaded the barbed hunting quarrel into his crossbow once more. The effort of pulling the string back seemed to take all of his strength. But he couldn’t stop, not while such cruelty continued for the abandoned half-O’stari.

Brary glanced through the small opening in the door again. He raised the crossbow to take careful aim. It wasn’t as clear a shot as he would have preferred with the shifting bodies between him and Solstice, including the man who’d opened his own home to Brary while he recovered. Logan squirmed with each strike, understandably so, but adding an element of risk to a shot that normally the hunter could make with ease.

He stood straight and tall, exhaling to steady his fingers on the trigger, focus narrowing to the small points below Solstice’s shoulder blades where his bolt would slide between his ribs and through a lung or maybe even his heart. Just one shot, that’s what he could guarantee before everything was thrown into chaos. Better make it count.

Before he could second guess the consequences of the action, the trigger clicked, releasing the bolt to fly. In his weakened state with unsteady hands, he’d pulled up a little and the bolt met its mark, a little higher than he intended.

Solstice reacted immediately—his fine, pale green linen shirt bloomed crimson and he dropped the scourge. The gathered slaves cried in sudden understanding and terror, scattering several directions at once. Solstice ducked behind one of the humble dwellings and called out, presumably for guards Brary hadn’t noticed before from his limited view.

Brary spat a string of curses before stumbling out of Logan’s doorway. If he could have killed Solstice with his one shot, Logan might have had a chance to live, possibly even as a free man if he could have escaped. As it was, Solstice wasn’t stupid, and would deduce where the bolt came from. The poor man bound to the whipping post was doomed. That Brary acted during his punishment, regardless of the true reasons, further sealed his fate. But Brary didn’t have time to think about that now.

In an attempt to use the confusion of the running slaves to his advantage, Brary made a painful dash for the outer wall bordering the property. Through the garden filled with lemon trees, passing a jumble of flat pads of cactus, and he could see the stone wall. If he could just get there, hopping over should be easy enough, even with his partially healed injuries. Beyond that, if he could just get out of the city, he would be free to hunt Earth’s Wall again.

Solstice wasn’t dead, but with luck, he would get an even worse infection than the one Brary had. But he couldn’t hope for such a favorable turn of events. The man was born into wealth far beyond anything Brary had ever experienced in all of his years as a running bird hunter; Solstice could afford the best care the Twisted Snake Temple could offer.

Between the lemon trees and the wall was an open space of the garden with only short berry bushes and vegetables that would leave him no cover at all. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Brary made a run for it, his feet trampling newly planted tomato and carrot seedlings. The sound of several heavy booted footsteps from behind spurred him to action.

He broke into a sprint, heedless of the pain. As soon as his hands slapped against the wall, he climbed upward and cleared it without sparing another thought. It would be easy enough to lose the guards in the foot traffic of the city. He just needed a couple turns behind him to get enough of a lead on them to blend in.

Bells tolled all around him. That wasn’t good. Solstice must have had the entire city guard on alert.

His gaze flicked left and right. A pair of guards approached from the right. Left, he could still go left. The townspeople stopped to stare, some falling back against the walls in their confusion. Brary didn’t pay them much attention, but instead turned down the street at a run to the next intersection. The guards chased him, their boots clattering on the cobblestones. Brary veered to his right down an alleyway. He wasn’t far from the market square. The top edges of the vanes of mill were visible against the clear blue sky over the other buildings surrounding it.

The sound of his blood rushing filled his ears, muffling the peel of the bells to dull awareness. Brary turned another corner and past the public toilet where he’d interrogated Horse Bend only a few weeks before. Down the alley by the bakery, sliding to a halt in the market square where he faced half a dozen of the city guards. They pointed their weapons at him and he turned to run back the other direction just in time to see more guards at the other end of the alleyway. There was nowhere left for him to go.

The guards closed in on him with raised weapons holding him at a safe distance.

“You’re under arrest for murder,” said the one with a blue ribbon dangling from his uniform. Three others approached him quietly with iron manacles in their leather-gloved hands. “Come quietly and you may be granted some leniency.”

* * *

Amarice dropped her bag with a thump on Conan’s workbench. She grinned at his shocked expression, like she was having a private joke at his expense. Sister Goodwrench, followed behind the scavenger. Unlike her companion, the spark priest opened her own bag and carefully placed handfuls the sparkling pieces of gold and platinum jewelry on the workbench for him to inspect.

“What’s next?” Amarice asked.

Conan swept the retrieved jewelry into a bin, then stood and walked around the workbench.

“Follow me,” he said, turning to the door. Pixie jostled awake from where she was sleeping in the loose folds of his collar and poked an inquisitive nose out to test the air. Her beady black eyes glanced first at Goodwrench, then Amarice before she stretched, yawned, and curled back up around Conan’s neck. Amarice retrieved her own bag and slung it over her shoulder before following the other two out the door.

“Elaivani has been teaching some of the concepts of making O’stari power cells, but hasn’t had the materials for a demonstration,” Conan explained, leading the way down the hall. “To be honest, I wish I had more time to study as well.”

Goodwrench moved at a near jog to keep up, bouncing a little on her toes. Amarice hadn’t understood the depths of her enthusiasm for all things electrical before, but had some idea of it now.

Glass shattered in the workroom down the hall where a door stood propped open with a large rock.

Conan smiled at the two women. “Sounds like it was time to visit him anyway.”

Elaivani’s teaching room was actually part of the hangar that had been repurposed, with thin, hastily built walls and numerous windows installed at the alien’s insistence. The reason was apparent now with all of them flung wide open to allow a cross breeze, which carried an acrid odor with it. A scattering of dark green glass shards littered the floor in a puddle of gently steaming liquid.

Goodwrench grinned at Amarice. “Isn’t it exciting?”

Amarice was a little more hesitant, keeping her feet well away from the unknown substance on the floor. How did Goodwrench trust so easily when she’d almost died from O’stari poison only hours before?

One of the spark priests from the gaggle who were studying before the interruption, a young man in the protective garb of Captured Water, took a leather apron from where it hung on a nail in the wall, grabbed a bucket and mop, and began cleaning up the mess. That’s when Elaivani turned his attention to the trio, his strange eyes resembling Zanna’s in an unsettling way. Amarice suppressed a shiver.

But the alien seemed unconcerned with her. Instead, he addressed Conan.

“Anything good?” he asked. Conan handed over the bin.

“I can’t tell the difference between white gold and platinum, not without a lot of steps,” Conan said. “They might have some maker’s marks, but you’ll have to sort it yourself.”

Elaivani picked through the delicate pieces, arranging them into separate piles on the table.

“White gold, white gold, platinum,” he muttered. “Only a few humans have the ability to see the color difference, but most O’stari can see it easily. The diamonds are useful for making cutting tools.”

“They wore bland stones that were more suitable for making tools?” Amarice asked. “The People from Before were so weird.”

Elaivani paused his sorting to shrug. “I don’t honestly have the cultural understanding to be able to say why they had such preferences.”

Amarice pulled the coils of plastic coated copper wire out of her bag and set them down on the table with the jewelry.

“I thought this might be helpful, too,” she said, “so I grabbed it.”

Elaivani cast a surprised, but respectful glance her way. “I can find a use for that.”

By now, with the mess cleaned up and something interesting happening at the front table, the spark priests in the room crowded closer to see.

“Alright, everyone take a break,” Elaivani said. He turned to Conan. “I will need access to the smithy in order to process this into usable parts.”

Conan nodded. “You’ll have to convince Sharis yourself. Good luck.”


	17. Windows into Another Time

Chapter 15: Windows into Another Time

“Always eager to profit from slavery, or to send the condemned to the arena for the entertainment of the roaring crowds, there is no true justice to be had in Cradle’s Edge.”

–Posta McDonald, Hired Ranch Worker

The bald man lead Zanna into another room, smaller than the first, with vaulted ceilings braced by beams of wood where intricately knotted designs of decorative cord hung. At the center, a rounded chimney descended like a cloak over the wide fire pit that heated the room with glowing coals. Several chairs surrounded the fire, each sporting a thick cushion on the seat.

“My name is Nike,” her host said, offering his palms. “Nike Skipper. I’m an archaeologist, and one of the caretakers of the Red Lodge.”

“An archaeologist?”

“I am a student of the People from Before. The Red Lodge houses an extensive collection of relics gathered from the ruins. We’ve done our best to resurrect the Lodge to all its former glory.”

“And what is the Red Lodge, exactly?”

“It’s a place of hospitality, first and foremost, popular with 3,782 people in its past life,” Nike said, beaming. “But I like to give it little touches of Before to improve its ambiance and for the pleasure and education of guests.”

The warmth radiating from the fire pit in the center of the room was a welcome change after the colder temperature outside. Zanna rubbed her hands together to rid herself of the tingling sensation in her fingers. Beyond the noticeable change in the weather as she traveled north, she hadn’t considered the chill of the wind as she drove the open Before-cart. She took in more of the décor of the place, admiring the shelves built into the walls displaying the many curious items left behind after the war.

“It’s beautiful,” she said at last. It seemed like the polite response to the man’s earnest care of the place. Nike accepted the praise, puffing up slightly.

“Come, I will show you the best pieces in the collection,” he said, motioning her closer to follow him into one of the smaller adjoining rooms.

It was only a little larger than her bedroom when she was growing up with Temaar, but it was filled with glass-lidded cases and illuminated through an angled skylight in the ceiling. The displays were neatly arranged around the edges of the room, carefully placed so that none distracted the viewer from its neighbors. They were filled with curiosities of Before, a palm-sized black device of some kind, a set of finely crafted, identical eating utensils, old wind chimes—flat pieces of metal cut into unique shapes dangling from a double-looped ring.

One case in particular stood out among all the others. Instead of a flat bed inside a wood frame with a glass lid, this one stood tall with glass panes on all of its sides to best show off the white stoneware drinking vessel contained inside. Nike went to stand beside the case, eager to impress.

“This is the finest thing I ever found in the ruins,” he explained. Indeed it was, the glaze on the mug in near perfect condition, with only a small chip on the underside of the looped handle. It bore two words, in lettering precise as only the People from Before could make—“male tears”. Zanna squinted. She could read the words of course, but they didn’t make any sense.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a ritual drinking vessel,” Nike said with practiced authority. “In my travels, I found evidence of a class of warriors of Before, and they would keep slaves for the purpose of consuming their tears before battle, perhaps to grant them mystical power.”

Zanna’s face twisted. Nike continued. “They were almost exclusively women and must have been unfathomably wealthy to own enough men to fill one of these. Sadly, it is the only one I found still intact.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said. The O’stari might have considered her a barbarian, but there were certain lines she definitely wouldn’t cross.

Nike  smiled and gestured to some of the other mugs in the displays, each of a different design. Some bore the images of animals in unnatural poses, with phrases written beneath them. Others had simple images of the signs that could still be seen in the ruins of the cities.

“To us it is unthinkable,” Nike agreed. “But I feel it is important not to judge the past too harshly; it is a different place where they do things differently for reasons we may not understand. We can learn from their failings only because they had them.”

Zanna nodded.  It was a compelling argument.

“But I’m forgetting the mission of the Lodge,” he said. “Please forgive an enthusiastic old man his obsessions. You must be tired after your journey; why else would you be here but to rest?”

But Zanna wasn’t tired at all. After the exhilaration of driving, of traveling such vast distances in so short a time without having to walk it herself—it was the laziest trip outside of the time she was kidnapped and taken to an alien planet.

“Er, actually,” she began, “do you know anything about an O’stari compound near by?”

Nike scowled. “Why would you want to go there?”

It was the first time he’d been anything but perfectly cheerful, something of a relief that Zanna had seen the other side of his mask.

“I’m looking for knowledge,” she said.

“If you’re looking for knowledge you shouldn’t listen to the hermit who lives there. He has just enough understanding to mislead a seeker such as yourself. His name is Rustown Coulee.”

* * *

The guards pushed Brary into the tiny jail cell with rough hands, locking the metal door shut behind him. Only a small window placed high up in the stone wall allowed in any light. With the rough brickwork of the wall, Brary could possibly find enough foot and hand holds to peer through with window at the world outside, but it wouldn’t help him to escape; it was well secured with a thick iron grating sunk into recesses in the wall. A cot with a mattress still bearing the imprint of the previous occupant of the cell was pressed against one wall, while a bucket sat next to the opposite side of the room in an effort to stay as far away from the foul odors emanating from it as possible.

Brary stripped off his boots, then went to investigate the window, climbing the wall slowly as he held on with just his fingertips and toes. He gave the grate an experimental tug, and it moved only slightly with the dirt or sand grinding a little in the holes. He could fit one of his hands through the bars, but the window was so high up and he no friends left to rescue him.

The jail itself wasn’t a large building; Brary counted only a dozen cells on the way to his own. From what little he knew of the legal system in Cradle’s Edge, the majority of crime was punishable by enslavement, usually temporary things such as petty thievery. Or sometimes a number of fights in the arena was deemed appropriate by the court. He doubted that his attempted murder on one of the city’s most prominent residents would earn him such a light penalty.

The courtyard attached to the jail was much larger than necessary for the gibbet where a rope dangled as a gruesome warning to other would-be criminals and slaves tempted to run away. Executions were a popular spectacle just like the blood sports in the arena.

He dropped to the floor and put his boots back on. Probably best to keep his feet warm. It didn’t seem like there would be many comforts forthcoming in his time as a guest of the city.

The guards had confiscated the few weapons and tools he had on him at the time of his arrest, checking his clothes thoroughly for any hidden surprises. It left him little to do but wait for his legal options to present themselves. He took a moment to inspect the hard, thin mattress for bugs before settling on it and staring at the wall.

Brary wasn’t a rich man, and he didn’t have many contacts in the city besides the slaves who had cared for him while he was injured. His chance of gaining the help of an advocate to appeal to the judex in his defense was slim.

He might not even get a trial before a judex, depending on if the powers that be wanted to trust it to a layman. No, it was far more likely that his fate would be determined by the mayor.  The Valmonde family had  close ties with the mayor, offering a great deal of support over the years in the form of taxes and gifts.  H e could expect no leniency from the mayor, not after he’d attacked Solstice. 

If only he’d  insisted on going to the temple . The  spark priests might be serving their own agenda, but the temple was far enough from the city that the mayor of Cradle’s Edge had no power there .

Brary got up from the cot to study the door he’d been so rudely shoved through. If he could find some way out, he could avoid the gallows. The metal plates that made up the bulk of the door weren’t thick, and tapping his fingers on it he heard a hollow ringing.  A hollow core. At the bottom was a small slat built in that would slide open from the outside to allow meals and the waste bucket to pass through, but too small for him to squeeze himself out. He’d never get his shoulders past the door.

Breaking through the door was possible with tools , but noisy. The cell was designed to hold a person with minimal risk to the jailers making the rounds, but if he could find some other weakness to exploit, he could free himself and be out beyond the city walls in half an hour.  He settled back down on the mattress, waiting for the solution to present itself. 

Brary’s gaze drifted to the floor, tracing the patterns of wear. How many prisoners had been stuck in the same room before him? How many of them had gone mad with boredom? Had the others been relieved on their way to the hangman, finally able to walk in the light of the sun again? 

A while later, the  small  square of light shining in through the window migrated from the floor, beginning a slow climb up the door opposite. If only Brary himself had the mobility of light. The slat at the bottom of the door slid over and a hand came into view only momentarily as it shoved a bowl inside and just as quickly vanished, snapping the tiny opening in the door shut with a ringing finality. Brary got up from the bed and pressed his ear to the door, trying to find a clue that would allow him to escape.

Whoever was on the other side of the door walked with an unexpected stealth. Quiet, soft shoes. Not like the heavy boots worn by the usual guards.  There was the distinctive clink of pottery and a slide across a rough floor at the room adjacent to his own. Metal on stone. The cook carrying a pot and bowls to feed the prisoners?  Were they allowed to speak with prisoners?

He had no reason to think any of the kitchen staff would turn traitor on his behalf, but if he could talk to them, they might let a nugget of information slip that would help him to escape. It would take a lot of time. Maybe too much, depending on how quick the trial and sentencing were carried out.

Brary ate the bland mush in the bowl before returning to the bed and turning until he found a position comfortable enough to fall into a fitful sleep, since he had nothing to do but wait until the next mealtime and some extra rest wouldn’t hurt his healing injuries.


	18. The Caravan

Chapter 16: The Caravan

“Shadows in the water, a fish glides by floating petals. My love is gone, and I’m left with only the memory of the potential—haunting and bittersweet.”

–Wall Xaco, _Beauty’s Kiss,_ verse 60

He thought his adventuring days were behind him once he opened his entertainment establishment. Taco Jack counted out several hundred fochs, splitting the pile of plastic with his most senior dancer and the doorman who’d secured his office for the last eight years. With Amarice gone almost four months, leaving to check on her was the only practical option.   
After Valley disappeared, and the town watch found his home broken into but couldn’t determine exactly what happened to him, there were disgruntled murmurings among his staff. Some were concerned that whoever had taken Valley might have done it because of some grudge against Taco. The dancer was the kindest of individuals and didn’t seem the type to make enemies. Some speculated that it was unrequited romantic feelings that led to his disappearance, but no one knew for certain.

When no attacks against Taco were forthcoming, the whispers of his staff shifted to criticize him personally, suggesting that for all his sweet words of being a family rather than just a working relationship in the end he didn’t care about any of them. It wasn’t true, of course. The loss of his best dancer had significantly impacted his  business . Not enough to close up shop, but  enough for him to notice the difference . And now the lucrative deal he’d hoped Amarice would strike on his behalf hadn’t materialized. 

Anything more going wrong and Taco could be in serious trouble. If the worst happened, he could establish a new shop in another town with the few staff he was taking with him.  And he would look good in their eyes, caring as a benevolent father searching for Amarice when she didn’t return home.

Charllow  tied down the large blanket on top of the wagon to cover the supplies Taco hoped to  use to entice the spark priests and the Returned into an exclusive trade deal . They were almost ready to start the long journey to the salt flats; he anticipated that it would take the better part of a full month to get there, even with the donkeys, which weren’t  much  faster than people  when pulling a load  on long trips. 

Some of the dancers moved awkwardly as they finished their own preparations. Most of them weren’t used to wearing armor—or even much in the way of clothing—but it was prudent to outfit them as if they were fighters instead of entertainers to maintain an image of danger to anyone tempted to rob them in their travels. Years of working the pole gave them toned muscles that looked good in armor, even if none of them had actual fighting skills.

Since Amarice returned from Shade’s Respite a year previously, Taco had been quietly inquiring about O’stari power cells. He’d gotten lucky—appropriate for someone twice named for the things of Before—and found a family in a town only a few days to the west that collected them and used them for lighting in their own house. The power cells didn’t shed as much light as the electric lighting the spark priests of Captured Water could make, instead providing a gentle glow to keep night time terrors at bay for the children and prevent stubbed toes for anyone waking in the middle of the night.

Taco offered them a pittance, only thirty fochs for each of their four “night lights”. With those scrawny, sad-eyed children, the parents successfully bargained for double Taco’s initial offer. He carried them himself in a leather bag slung around his waist and buttoned tight. They were worth more collectively than the donkeys, the wagon, and all of its contents combined.

With the wagon loaded and dancers looking the part of skillful warriors, it was almost time to set off when Taco spotted the older woman storming their way with a small boy in tow. She looked like Amarice, even down to sporting a mother’s mark on her cheekbone. 

Taco ducked behind the wagon, pretending to examine the bucket of axle grease swinging from the undercarriage. 

“ Taco Jack,” she  called .  “Where have you sent my daughter?”

With her slight build, she wouldn’t strike him as threatening in most circumstances. Unfortunately, these weren’t most circumstances. Taco stood up straight, since he couldn’t avoid the confrontation.

“Constru,” he said, putting on his smoothest tone. “It’s been a long time. How are you?”

“Shut up,” she snapped. “and tell me where she is.”

So that’s where Amarice got her attitude. Not exactly logical, yet formidable all the same.

“I can hardly do both,” he said,  opening his hands in a placating gesture. “ But I was just leaving to go find her myself.”

“So you don’t know.” Constru crossed her arms, letting the boy—Stinker—run where he pleased. The child remained within sight of his grandmother.

“I know where she should be,” Taco huffed. “It was an important mission. Whether or not she’s still there is a different question.”

Constru glared at the implication that her daughter might have simply abandoned her family.

Taco shrank back a little, licking his lips. “I sent her to negotiate a deal. South of here, about a month’s travel. The People from Before are returning.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s true.”  That was something he could be completely truthful about at least.

Her expression softened, but she said nothing for an uncomfortably long time. The boy was busy making friends with the pack animals, petting in turn the velvet noses of the two donkeys hitched to the wagon.

“We’re coming with you,” she said at last.

“What?” he said. “I can’t allow that. It’s dangerous, there could be bandits.”

“And you thought it was acceptable to send Amarice on this journey?” Her eyes glittered dangerously. They both knew she’d won.

Taco sighed. “Fine.”

* * *

Amarice entered the massive hangar meant to accommodate the ships the engineers and spark priests were in the process of building, starting with power cells. A smaller corner of the room, enclosed for privacy and to reduce the noise from the hangar, served as Elaivani’s teaching workshop with attached living quarters. Through the vents, Amarice could see sparks of light flashing, only partially obscured by the electrical lighting mounted to the towering metal rafters of the hangar. For once there wasn’t a crowd of spark priests around the alien.

Her rapped her knuckles on the hollow metal door to the workshop, making a deliberate effort to be heard over the sounds of his current project. There was the sound of something dropped with a softened clang and indistinct grumbling—Amarice didn’t understand the O’stari language yet, but she could guess cursing was universal. She suppressed a giggle as the door opened abruptly.

Elaivani said nothing, only stared at her expectantly with those unnerving eyes. Such a strange man. What did Zanna see in bringing him back to Earth?

“Conan is sending us on another supply run,” Amarice said. “Anything you need that we should look out for?”

“Nothing specific,” he replied. “I have the materials for a few power cells. If you find more platinum or copper, we can use it.”

Amarice shrugged and turned to leave.

“Wait,” Elaivani said. Amarice stopped.

“Have you heard anything about Zanna?” he asked. “Has she come back?”

“Not yet. It hasn’t been long enough.” Amarice frowned. For a being of superior education, he sure had trouble counting days. She nodded to the wall full of writing behind him. It was very similar to what she found at his old workshop. “What’s that about?”

“Nothing,” he muttered. She raised a eyebrow. “Fine, it’s some math I’ve been working on in my spare time. I’m just—trying to figure out how good our chances of success are.”

Amarice crossed her arms, unconvinced. “And? What do your numbers tell you?”

He leaned against one arm on the door frame as if trying to block her keen eyes from discerning the truth out of the jumble of O’stari figures that she still couldn’t read. When Amarice didn’t take the hint to go away, he sighed.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “For the moment it doesn’t look good, but I’ve been wrong before. There may be a missing piece that I can’t see yet.”

Everyone toiling away at the launch facility knew their chances against the _Baowe Zeo_ were slim from the beginning. Yet they worked on a project that might not even work in the end. No, that wasn’t what was really bothering the alien. All of her years of trading, of reading people and their mannerisms, screamed that there was something else under the surface.

“That’s not what you’re worried about,” Amarice said.  The words, now out in the open, seemed to render the truth solid and clear . The only question was whether he was aware.

“Not entirely, no,” he admitted. So he was.

She cocked her head. Zanna  ca me back to earth missing all of her tattoos and  only thin streaks remaining of her deepest scars , all thanks to the medical technology of the O’stari. Elaivani likewise bore no visible signs of physical trials. Unmarked bodies belonged to children who hadn’t proven themselves, but the aliens  didn’t wear their stories on their skin  like  humans .  As a friend,  she had Zanna’s  interests to look after, without any of the usual ways of  judging the situation .

“I hope you are worthy,” she said at last. It was true, even if her first encounter with him was less than ideal. Witnessing someone kidnapping a friend would sour anyone’s disposition.

His eyes widened. “Is it so obvious?”

Amarice grinned. “Not to everyone else.”

* * *

Zanna sank a little deeper into the m ilky pool of hot water.  A faint sheen of  floral scented  oil floated on the surfac e and coated her limbs,  imparting a luxurious softness to her skin .  The Red Lodge served both for the preservation of history and as an inn for the merchants that moved goods over vast stretches of road.  S he always knew about the thriving trade between distant cities, but didn’t grasp the full extent of it until now. Reworked metal, wood harvested from the cold northern forest, and wool were common exports from  the town. In exchange they traded for wine from Fly-J, where the grapes grew well, and dyes from Cradle’s Edge,  among other things. 

It was more expensive there than  at  any other inn she’d  stayed at twenty fochs per night, but it was also the only inn in the town.  More convenient, and more restful than going back to the Before-cart to sleep for the night.  And close t o the bakery.  That was another positive in its favor.

After a tour of Nike’s collection of Before relics, it was late enough that finding the O’stari compound in the forest on the north side of the town might prove challenging in the dark. So Zanna paid for a room for the night. Nike suggested she try a hot bath, a specialty of the Lodge.

The tub was a large recess in the stonework floor with a series of steps descending into the pool of hot water inviting guests to relax, even fall asleep without fear of drowning. Zanna leaned back, resting her head against a folded towel on the ledge that the attendant—a soft-spoken woman wearing a plain red wrap top over loose red pants—provided, taking her clothes for cleaning in exchange.

A series of pipes hovered above her, glaringly white against the dark ceiling. The glow of a few candles arranged on a gray metal platter nearby glinted off the brass pull chain dangling above that she could summon more hot water with a lazy tug from where she lay in the tub.

It was the perfect temperature to unwind the knots in her muscles. Driving long distance was testing her body in ways she wouldn’t have expected.

When she finished with the bath, she drained the water away then climbed out and used the towel to dry herself. Zanna wrapped the towel around her midsection, tucking the end over her breasts to keep it from falling off, then padded into the adjacent bedroom.

The attendant waited there with an assortment of baked clay vessels arranged on the small table next to a waist-high, slatted bench. Opposite the bench was a bed large enough for two people.

“Are you ready for your massage?” the woman asked. She patted the bench where she’d placed more towels for cushioning, then opened one of the containers.

Zanna blinked. “That’s included?”

“Of course.” Her lips quirked upward at the corners. “Hospitality is the Red Lodge way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omigosh, had to go to a family gathering earlier, which was a time I'm normally asleep. Then when I got back, I napped because I was dead tired. Once I got up, I did the editing, and it's done before midnight my time. *whew*
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy. I liked writing Zanna's bath scene. The girl needs some comfort and relaxation time. <3


	19. End of the Line

Chapter 17: End of the Line

“We are a reflection of the universe itself. Mostly space, with specks of matter in between.”

–Tiundin Meyfluas, O’stari Statistical Anthropologist

Brary listened to the noise of the crowd in the jail’s courtyard from his cell. A cloud-filled sky was visible through the bars over the window and he could smell the small drops of rain falling to the dry earth. It wasn’t enough to deter the audience from gathering to witness the hanging.

A plate sat untouched on the floor. It was better quality than the slop he’d been given the previous three days, a finer last meal for a condemned man. Running bird steak. Brary laughed until tears fell from his eyes at the irony when it slid through his cell door.

Once the guard stopped at his door to inform him of the court’s decision the previous evening, made without giving him the benefit of defending himself, he found he had no appetite and couldn’t sleep. Instead, he spent the night in long neglected contemplation.

How had it all gone so wrong? Anyone with the smallest mote of sense could see that Earth’s Wall was evil. They were the monsters, not him.

Brary climbed up to look out of the window of his cell on the crowd gathered outside. He couldn’t make out the details from his vantage, but there was a bottleneck at the gate where the sea of bodies pressed closer than anywhere else in the enclosed courtyard. Although the space was quickly filling to the brim, the guards were still let them in one at a time.

He squinted. They were collecting an admission fee for the citizens of the city to view his execution. His death would be sold as entertainment to the masses.

If it weren’t so grim, he’d be flattered so many came to witness the event. It was by far the most attention he’d ever received for his work.

Brary let go of the bars and stepped down to the floor. Sitting on the poor excuse for a bed, he folded his legs into a comfortable position. He’d been given notice of his execution so that he could prepare for the inevitable, make any prayers his particular deities required, or to think on what he’d done.

That is what he did. Brary hadn’t been especially religious, only making the perfunctory offerings of the sacrificial piece from his running bird hunts. Perhaps that was where everything went wrong. He’d never thought to offer a piece of each member of Earth’s Wall he killed. It seemed the gods weren’t interested in human flesh, but maybe that assumption was incorrect as evidenced by his current predicament. If the gods were never given their share, they would take all of him as recompense. It was only their due.

He sighed, wishing he’d quit before coming to Cradle’s Edge. At least the debt would be repaid, both his own for not giving the offerings to which the gods were entitled and Attorney’s killers, who he’d long since delivered to their own afterlife.

It wasn’t long before the door opened with a squeal of its hinges, the first time since he’d been pushed into the cell. Perhaps it was a mercy that they were executing him so promptly. Far worse to commit lesser crimes and slowly go mad over years locking in a cell without human interaction. Or he could have ended up like Logan, enslaved and subject to another person’s whims whether cruel or kind. If kind masters existed at all in the world.

There were four guards in total to escort him, bound in heavy manacles and leg irons, to the raised brick platform standing before the crowd outside. Brary blinked in the diffuse light after a few days stuck in the cell, slightly blinded, and deafened by the jeers leveled at him. The guards hadn’t even allowed him the dignity of going to his death with his boots.

A lump of dung flew over several several heads and dropped into the path just in front of his bare feet. The execution was held in the afternoon, to give the laboring poor something to look forward to after a few hours of work, a treat to ease their boredom during their lunch breaks.

One of the guards jabbed him in the back as he reached the top of the steps. He shuffled to the noose dangling from the cross beam above the rain-spotted metal trap door in the platform.

“Last words, prisoner?” the executioner, a man wearing armor similar to the guards but with his face painted a ghostly white to resemble a grinning skull, asked.

Brary gazed at the crowd, which had fallen into silence. The rights of the condemned to speak their last thoughts were always held sacred, no matter how hated the person sent to hang.

Among the hardened faces, he spotted small hints of their character—the stylized eye symbol of Earth’s wall embroidered on someone’s sleeve here or dyed on a small banner there. There were even children, little ones perched on adult shoulders with the symbol of hate painted on their chubby faces. What could he say to move them? Would it do any good?

The flood of understanding almost knocked him over.

He’d failed. Utterly. Completely.

If anything, he’d made it worse, bolstering Earth’s Wall with the sympathies of the general population in the wake of a madman’s killing spree. The organization embraced their hateful ideology openly and without apology, yet somehow came out of the situation looking like the victims to the masses. And Brary himself had become the true monster in their eyes. Unbelievable.

Numb, Brary only shook his head. The executioner tied a blindfold over his eyes and slipped the noose over his head. Left in a darkness that mimicked death but didn’t compare to the one in his wounded soul, Brary stood still in the silence while the crowd held its breath.

The clack of the release sounded loud and sharp in the silence. The cold metal plate under his bare feet fell away, then Brary knew nothing more.

* * *

It didn’t take long for the body twitching on the rope to still. The human citizens of the Cradle’s Edge watched without noise, without movement. The rain began to fall in earnest, restoring them to life. They breathed a collective sigh of relief. Now that the Cradle’s Edge Hunter was dead, they could all rest a little safer. Those closest to the wall surrounding the courtyard drifted away first, then the rest of the crowd trickled through the gate back to their own boring lives.

The executioner cut the rope, releasing the Brary’s corpse to fall heavily into the pit, then he reset the trap door and went back to his usual duties inside the prison while a half-O’stari man, the undertaker’s slave, pushed a wheelbarrow into position before opening the small side door of the platform to retrieve the body.

If anyone watched through the gate, or even from the windows of the jail, they might have seen the slave cradling the corpse of the condemned a little closer than he usually did with the bodies of those prisoners deemed too dangerous to join the ranks of the enslaved. They might have witnessed him gently laying the body into the bed of the cart the way one might tuck a child insistent on fighting sleep into bed, with a sheet laid over the top. They might have seen him leave with the corpse through the gate like normal, but turn in a different direction after passing over the threshold.

Once outside, the undertaker’s slave took the body pas t  a large house several streets away. He didn’t pass by  the  path leading to the door at the front of the house, instead turning along the outer wall to the back of the property away from the notice of the free citizens,  to the slave quarters. There he quietly stopped and wheeled the body up to the other gate at the back of the property. He whistled, a high-pitched sound that got lost in the other noise of the city, then turned away and stretched his palms to the sky. Just another lazy slave stealing a moment to straighten his back.

Inside the gate, others approached one by one. They made small gifts of their meager possessions—a handmade toy, a peculiarly shaped pebble, and many other tiny, unremarkable objects. If they’d laid more valuable items with the body of the man who tried to save them, they couldn’t be sure the he would be able to keep them when grave robbing was a common enough practice. All of it, the offerings of nearly twenty slaves of mixed extraterrestrial ancestry, could be tucked around the body without disturbing the silhouette of the sheet draped over the bed of the cart.

When all the reasonable time for a break had elapsed, the undertaker’s slave grasped the handles of the cart firmly, the muscles of his arms rippling visibly in the sleeveless tunic he wore that left the burn scars on his forearm visible. He lifted with a small grunt and pressed on, taking a winding path that ran past the warehouses on his way to the southern gate to the city.

It was a slow process to get there, the slave straining and sweating with the effort of pushing the now heavily laden wheelbarrow past the graves arranged in a large circular pattern. Cradle’s Edge allowed two types of funerary rites, but those executed at the gallows or in the arena were not allowed burial within the city. That suited the slave just fine. He’d never get out of the city otherwise.

Instead of burial in the ground, the condemned were given a sky burial on the top of the cliffs near the town where the condors would find them. Among the elite of the city, sky burials were for the lesser people who couldn’t afford to go to the afterlife in comfort and luxury. But for those who rejected the notions of class in the city, sky burial was a sure path to reincarnation. For those who lived in chains, whether literal or figurative, rebirth as a condor to soar over the land was the ultimate freedom, to rise to the ultimate vantage point for looking down on those who looked down on them in their previous life.

The slave huffed and puffed his way up the well worn dirt path to the top of the hill where a neatly arrange d pile of  flat  rocks formed a rough platform, a dining table for the condors.  The gentle rain had ceased, leaving the sandy earth damp, but not muddy.  Pulling the cart up next to the platform, he moved the body to the table and removed the sheet. To facilitate the burial, he stripped off the clothing, but arranged the body on the stone with the offerings he “didn’t see” being left  under a nearby pile of fist-sized stones while he  rested .   
Then he backed away to watch. The scavenging birds weren’t afraid of him after all his years of feeding them, but it was wise to keep a respectful distance from those ripping beaks. The body vanished under the sheltering black feathers as the birds went to work tearing flesh from bones in a sacred rite as old as the  cliffs themselves.

Holding a vigil over the deceased wasn’t necessary for his master’s wishes, but it was the least he could do to see Dromat Carrs off to the afterlife. After all, the man was a legend.


	20. Keeper of the Trees

Chapter 18: Keeper of the Trees

“It is expected that a young O’stari will develop a closer bond with their master than with their own parents, often going returning to their teacher for advice on practical matters for years after completing their apprenticeship.”

–Waffle Route, intermediary

“What is your name?” Ryumeud asked the pretty half-human woman trailing behind him. The look on the mayor’s face when he showed up at his house a second time to “borrow” the woman offered on his previous visit was priceless. In his eagerness to see his unwanted alien visitor gone, Pilot hadn’t even specified when he should return the lady. That presented its own possibilities, but Ryumeud didn’t see a benefit in antagonizing the locals overly much. He would return her before the next dawn.

“Myslene,” she said, her voice small, but steady.

Ryumeud thought she seemed nervous, but he had no intention of harm. Consent was sacred, and without agency it couldn’t be given. No one in her position could. But that wasn’t his purpose in asking for her.

“I just wanted to ask you some questions,” he said to clarify. He didn’t break his stride at all, but continued to lead the way through the streets to the south gate. She might enjoy flying. There was a long, audible release of a tense breath behind him.

“I’m just a slave,” Myslene said. “I don’t know much beyond my work.”

“But you must hear things of interest from time to time? Things Pilot might not say to an outsider like me?”

Ryumeud continued without pause through the gate, the guards watching him leave, unperturbed. Myslene stopped, eyeing the archway above with trepidation, but Ryumeud only walked on as if he hadn’t noticed. The half-human woman jogged a little to catch up when the guards hadn’t moved from their posts to sound any alarm.

“He’ll have me killed,” she began.

“Not if I tell him nothing of what I know,” Ryumeud interrupted. He could understand the hesitation. He was, by his own admission, an outsider who had no stake in anything that took place on Earth once he left the planet behind, hopefully with Elaivani and Zanna in tow. “I just want to know if he was completely open about anything pertinent to my investigation.”

“I don’t know if he told you everything,” Myslene said, voice bitter. “But he gets a lot of his money from the Valmonde family, and they are part of Earth’s Wall. Solstice Valmonde is one of it’s leaders, in fact.”

Clearly the lady understood that Ryumeud was the more present threat at the moment. He stopped moving to summon his ship closer.

“So he might not particularly have anything against me, but consorts with those who would. Do you know anything about either of the fugitives?”

The ship blotted out the sun overhead before coming to rest in front of them, blowing sand and dust away in a large circle around itself. Myslene had taken an unconscious step backwards, hiding behind Ryumeud as the quietly humming machine touched down.

Ryumeud opened the hatch that descended from the side to reveal steps going into the belly of the ship, then motioned for Myslene to follow.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe here,” Ryumeud urged. “I have something that might help you.”

Myslene took a timid step up, feeling the slight give of the retractable stairs. Her host removed a small object, some kind of box that had no exterior latches, from the socket in the wall of the ship before settling in one of a pair of seats. He patted the empty chair next to him, illuminated by the colorful lights along the dash.

She took the offered seat and waited to see what would happen next.

“Give me your arm,” he said, gesturing at the one with the brand. She did as she was told.

Ryumeud took a wide gray patch out of the container, then applied it to the damaged skin of her forearm. At first the patch gave only a cool and wet sensation, like the nose of one of the mayor’s hunting dogs pressed against her palm when she went to offer them a special treat of scraps from the master’s table. Then it went slightly numb and tingly. While she watched, a pinprick of blue light appeared on the cold, wet patch, then moved in a line zigzagging back an forth across its surface.

“It should only take a few days,” Ryumeud explained. “Then you’ll have healed skin, completely free of marks.”

Myslene looked up at him with shocked, disbelieving eyes. “How is that possible? I’ve had the brand for years.”

Ryumeud smiled. “My—our—people have learned a lot about healing. The best way I can describe it is that the patch ‘reads’ what is damaged and compares it to what it should be, then encourages the skin to grow back to how it was before you were burned.”

Myslene watched the indicator light move in fascination. A drop of wetness landed on her forearm, splattering a little against the patch.

Ryumeud reached out to wipe away the other tear rolling down her face, his own twisting with concern. “Are you okay with this? Did I do something wrong? I thought this would help you to be free.”

“No—it’s just—I’ve been someone else’s property since I was a child. And now I’ll be free.”

Ryumeud nodded and tucked a curl of hair behind her ear. “As you should be. About the fugitives?”

“I don’t know much, and it may not be connected, but there was a man called Dromat Carrs.”

“That name isn’t familiar to me. Why don’t you tell me about him.”

The light from the patch blinked twice, then faded, signaling that the treatment was complete. Ryumeud lifted it from her arm, revealing the slightly darker tracing around the lines where the design was burned into her flesh. It was already healing, but too subtle for anyone to notice if they weren’t paying close attention.

“I heard from the others that he was fighting Earth’s Wall, killing them one at a time.” Myslene said, as though it explained everything.

“Nothing in my search requires me to do anything about them. What do they have to do with the fugitives?”

“Dromat Carrs was looking for his lady love, a missing half-O’stari woman called Zanna.”

“Oh, I see. How do I contact Dromat?”

“You can’t.” She shook her head. “He was executed for murder only a few days ago.”

Ryumeud scratched his head, closing one eye. “That doesn’t help much.”

“He came from north of Alliance, a trading outpost too small to even have a name. If you check there you might be able to find something about one of your fugitives, if it’s the same person.”

Ryumeud considered her words. Zanna’s trail might be really cold, especially if he could find her other home, but the trip might give him another lead, someone she trusted who might take her in.

“Thank you, Myslene. I will investigate further.”

She pointed to patch in his hand. “Can I keep that?”

Ryumeud smiled and handed over the container of spare patches. Normally he might keep some for himself in case of an injury, but Myslene and others like her needed it more. “Each one can be applied three times in total. Use them well.”

* * *

Zanna nibbled on her third pastry while walking north into the forest as Nike had instructed her. The aroma rising from the baked goods in the shop pulled her by the nose through the open door. Once inside the bakery, she struggled to choose only one thing to buy, she was so hungry and all of it looked delightful. But Archivist had something specific in mind, and directed her to the table laden with dark fruit filled pastries.

“Why those in particular?” she asked when she was far enough away not to look insane speaking to a voice in her head. 

“At present, I am building more nanites,” Archivist replied. “Those berries contain a useful mineral and as we are gearing up for a potentially devastating fight with the  _ Baowe Zeo _ , it seemed prudent to give you more healing capabilities.”

She stopped chewing for a moment. Somehow, it didn’t occur to her that they might fight against the  _ Baowe Zeo  _ directly. She’d pictured making a run for it instead, evacuating Earth in favor of another unknown planet. 

Zanna swallowed the lump of pastry that no longer tasted as sweet.

“Good idea then,” she said. “Let me know if there’s anything else in particular that I should be eating.”

“Of course. If you die, this iteration of me dies as well. While that wouldn’t be a great loss overall, I would prefer to avoid that outcome.”

The northern side of the city rested at the base of a mountain, with a cleared area for a short distance before the treeline resumed spreading upwards until it stopped abruptly at the mountain’s naked peak, appearing as like a green cloak wrapped around the towering landscape. It was a forest big enough to get lost in, and without roads Zanna would have to hike to the center on foot.

After several hours of walking, she came to a portion of the forest with larger trees blocking out the sun above so that she only had dappled sunlight to see by. Not only were the trees larger, but they were draped with long pale green fronds of some parasitic lichen that resembled long, tangled hair hanging from the branches.

The calls of the birds became faint and indistinct, seeming to come from all directions at once, then they stopped entirely. Zanna pressed on as quietly as she could. The absence of the birds spoke of a predator in the area, and she didn’t want to run into something like the bear in Cradle’s Edge.

Further into the forest, a canopy of thick vines tipped with red buds spread overhead between the trees circling a small clearing. Nestled in the patches of thick moss on the ground,white mushrooms grew in rings, their smooth caps like dinner plates in size and shape.

“Those mushrooms are from Water,” Archivist noted. “It’s the same species used to make self-healing building materials. They exist in symbiosis with reconciliation vines.”

“We must be getting close.”

A well worn path opened to the north of the small clearing, spots of white in the distance marking the way to go. Zanna followed the mushrooms, which grew thicker as she went until the ground was marbled with pale threads. The trees fell away once more, and Zanna was almost nose to nose with a lifelike statue of a man vanishing into a mushroom taller than herself, his face twisted in agony as though he were being eaten alive.

“ _That_ isn’t creepy at all,” Zanna muttered.

More statues rose from the forest floor along the trail. Beyond the disturbing artwork, a living bridge made from vines stretched across a chasm where a creek burbled as it flowed down the mountain side toward the town. Beyond that, a cluster of buildings stood, with a large one in the middle and five smaller ones huddled around it like a clucking hen surrounded by a brood of tiny chicks. More of the vines formed walkways between the buildings, as if the architect were creating a replica of the walkways crisscrossing the cities of Water.

“Is this the place?” she asked. “It looks O’stari.”

“Yes, according to my records,” Archivist answered. “But caution is advised. It doesn’t look like it should.”

“So it is,” another voice, unfamiliar and scratchy with age and disuse, said behind her.

Zanna turned abruptly to see a man with hair as white as the mushrooms around them, pointing a crossbow at her from behind one of the statues. She raised her hands slowly.

“You’re half-O’stari,” he said, peering through bushy eyebrows at her. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“My name is Zanna Route,” she said. “I’ve come for knowledge. Who are you?”

The old man lowered the crossbow, then pushed past her toward the largest of the buildings. “Rustown Coulee,” he said, his tone gruff. “I suppose I should let you in then. Come along, there’s dinner inside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have made a terrible mistake. I hired an editor to go over Shade's Respite, and got it back this last week. There is a LOT of work I'm going to have to do for the finished story, much of which I think will involve cutting out a whole side plot. (*silent, internal screaming*) Do I now declare my work here on the Archive as an AU? Did I just accidentally write fanfic of my own story? WTF?
> 
> Oh, well. For now I will just continue working on both versions simultaneously. It will probably be ridiculously long and inefficient, as I am still learning how to use as few words necessary to tell the story.


	21. Seeds of Change

Chapter 19: Seeds of Change

“When the sky-cites were launched, they were stocked with every variety of useful plant we could get. Not all of them grew well in space, and we still don’t know why.”

–Bryce Chandler, historian and teacher, City 9

Amarice’s eyes roamed the expansive hangar before she ducked out again and continued on her way to the training rooms. When a spark priest acolyte, still a teenager with an oily face and awkward gait, left the training room, Amarice grabbed his arm to get his attention.

“Have you seen Goodwrench?” she asked, dropping her hand.

“Not in the training rooms,” he replied. “Check the dining hall. Look for the turnip.”

“The what?” she asked. But the acolyte was already moving away to his next assignment, too busy to bother with answering her questions.

Amarice took his advice and made the trek to the dining hall. It was near midday, so the first shift of spark priests crowded inside, seated at the long tables and talking over their peers in the many conversations. Amarice scanned the room, looking for the familiar face. She spotted Goodwrench, alone at the end of one of the tables, hunched over a bowl.

Her hair was cut shorter, but with uneven clumps sticking out in all directions. Amarice took the seat across from her, prompting the other woman to look up.

Goodwrench’s eyes were red and swollen. She rubbed her cheek on her sleeve.

“Are you okay?” Amarice asked.

“I tried to cut my hair.” A sullen tone, as if that explained everything.

Amarice fell silent.

“It will grow back,” she offered when no further explanation was forthcoming.

“The others have started calling me ‘turnip’,” Goodwrench said. “I thought I would look better with shorter hair, but I made a mess of it.”

“It’s hard to do by yourself,” Amarice said. “Much easier when you have help. Want me to even it up for you?”

Goodwrench nodded.

“Elaivani needs some more things from the ruins, and I could use an electrical expert with me to help with some of the more technical stuff. Want to come with me after your hair is done?”

This time there was a smile. Amarice was beginning to like the spark priest. She had a sensitive nature to be so upset over a botched haircut. That kind of softness was rare and deserved to be protected.

Goodwrench finished shoveling the rest of her meal into her mouth, then returned her bowl and spoon to be washed before leading Amarice down the corridor to the sleeping apartments used by the spark priests. They were tiny rooms, cells for a single occupant, but Goodwrench sat on the bed and held out a pair of clippers not unlike the ones used to shear sheep. 

Amarice went to work trimming the excess hair where it was significantly longer than the rest, holding up the locks to get a more even cut when it fell against her head.

“I can’t do much about the length,” Amarice said. “So it may be a little shorter than you intended.”

“That’s okay. As you say, hair grows back.”

“Why did you want to cut it?”

Goodwrench took a long breath before answering. “All my life, I’ve done things to fit with others. When I was little, my mother took care of my hair. When I joined the Captured Water temple, I tried to look like I belonged there. But I don’t really fit in—the other are always mocking me, and when they aren’t doing that, they ignore me. Or worse, ignore what I say until someone else repeats it, then it becomes a good idea.”

Amarice ran her fingers through Goodwrench’s tresses, smoothing and snipping the loose curls. The other woman’s tone was bitter, but Amarice remained silent, listening.

Goodwrench continued. “I just wanted my look to be for me.”

Amarice set the clippers down on the end table next to a few sheets of drawings, designs tracing the paths of electrical circuits. It looked far more complicated than anything Amarice had tried to put together. If Goodwrench could understand the technical drawings of Before, there was no reason she shouldn’t have risen in the ranks of the temple. She was clearly smart enough for it, but maybe not forceful enough.

Picking up the palm-sized circle of polished metal that also rested on the end table, Amarice showed Goodwrench her new look.

“I like it,” the spark priest murmured. Then she frowned. “It shows off my scars more.”

* * *

When Ryumeud found the village and set his ship down a short walk away from its border, he didn’t expect much. The place was small, easily overlooked. Perhaps that was why Zanna ended up there as a child. A caretaker wishing to move her as far from Earth’s Wall as possible would have to find someplace like this.   
It was something he knew from studying history—a stage of development in new civilizations included an expansionist period which often brought slavery. But to do something like that to others required a specific outlook. The culture had to view people in defined categories to promote the inequality. A society is best served when it doesn’t limit the potential of individuals within it.

The market square was too poor for anything more permanent than bare dirt. He strolled through as the humans gaped and stumbled in their haste to get away. The merchants closed the flaps of their tents and stalls, hiding from the alien in their midst as if that would deter him. The blacksmith only glared at Ryumeud with a hammer in hand, shaking with rage or fear. Ryumeud couldn’t be sure, but met his gaze as he approached anyway. At least this one had a backbone. 

“I’m looking for Zanna Route,” Ryumeud said. “I’ve heard she was a local here.”

The smith made a sour face. “Haven’t seen her in more than a year.”

These people were even less helpful than those in Cradle’s Edge. Only one of the other merchants was going about her business, despite Ryumeud’s presence. Her stall was covered in thin scraps of cloth that flitted in the breeze winding through the village.

“Thank you,” Ryumeud said to the smith. He continued to the other stall.

The old woman perched on the stool behind the counter offered a friendly smile, minus a few teeth, and stood before lifting her palms in greeting.

“Must be an O’stari thing, to see the colors like I do,” she remarked. “I thought so. But I don’t think you’ve come for a dust veil.”

There was a comforting humor in her demeanor. Ryumeud smiled back, pressing his much wider hands to hers.

“I’m trying to find Zanna Route,” he said. “I understand she might have lived somewhere nearby.”

“She did. But she’s long gone now.”

“Anything you can tell me about that?”

“Someone killed her uncle and burned their house down. When she came through here, she asked for directions to Shade’s Respite.”

“What direction was the house?”

The old woman pointed a bony, wrinkled finger to the west. “She always came from that way. I don’t know how far.”

“Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.” Ryumeud said, then pointed at the cloth dangling from one of the crossbeams overhead. It was dyed in shades of orange and red that called to mind sunsets on Water. “How much for that?”

“Five fochs.” Ryumeud paid for the garment, and folded it before stuffing it into one of his pockets. He wouldn’t have much use for a dust veil, but it would make a nice memento of his second visit to Earth. The colors were pretty. Besides, she’d given him useful information.

Ryumeud returned to his ship and flew low over the village, while keeping his attention turned to the ground below. The land sloped in gently rolling hills, appearing as a patchwork of grasslands split by narrow waterways choked with short, silver-leafed trees.

Moments later a spot of deeper green caught his attention. Near it was the remains of a line where a fence may have stood. Ryumeud landed to examine the site up close.

A sad collection of rough bricks remained in the charred ruins. Bright green blades of grass and weedy stems poked between them, obscuring the chunks of blackened wood littering the site. Two other structures were still standing, far enough from the house that the fire hadn’t touched them.

Ryumeud opened the door of one and was assaulted by a familiar odor. An outhouse. He closed the door and went to investigate the other building.

Peering through a hole in the side where the elements had worn through, he spotted a rack of some kind built into one wall and little boxes built against the other side. The floor was covered in dirt and straw, emanating it’s own distinct scent. Livestock, though he didn’t know what kind. Zanna’s uncle must have been a farmer.

Ryumeud went back to the ruined house, nearly tripping over a length of sun-bleached bone in the grass. He picked it up to examine it while walking.

A human femur, if he had to take a guess. In this isolated state, it was difficult to determine where it came from, unless he could find more of the body. If the body had been reduced to bare bone, that would limit the information he could gain from it. Clothing or other personal effects might lead him to someone Zanna considered a friend. If he sifted through the ashes long enough, what would they tell him?

* * *

Logan hacked at the shrubs with a machete. A few days after Dromat stumbled through the night into his home, the master ordered all the taller plants on the property cut down. Too easy for an intruder to hide, though the lemon trees brought fochs from the sale of the fruits and prestige in the display of wealth.

He wiped the sweat off his face against his shirt. His back still ached from the touch of the flogger, the scabbed over welts itching as they healed. A lingering torment.

A dozen enslaved men and women labored in the garden patches around the house, but Solstice owned even more people who worked at the warehouse. And why? Logan knew their stories. Some were captured from other far flung places; others were serving out their sentences for past crimes. The laws in Cradle’s Edge were skewed to make it so difficult, almost impossible free oneself. It was a broken, corrupt system from the start.

Beyond the walls of the city was open desert. He could die from thirst. If he ran, and was caught, the brand on his arm would give him away.

The master—Solstice, Logan corrected himself as a flush of shame colored his face—was no more worthy than any of the slaves. And he’d dismissed most of the guards once Dromat was safely swinging from the hangman’s noose, only keeping two for extra security.

It was time for midday break. Even Solstice Valmonde wasn’t cruel enough to force them to work through the hottest part of the day. Or he recognized the value in preventing his livestock from collapsing with heat stroke.

Logan took a dipper of water from the clay crock, still slightly cool from the shade. Valmonde wanted to take even that little comfort away from them with the destruction of the lemon trees.

Logan sat cross-legged with the other smelly, sweat-drenched slaves, each of them with a brand similar to his own. He remembered well the red-hot iron and the smell of burned meat. No pain he’d ever experienced compared to the helplessness of being held down while the slave-dealer pressed the searing metal into his flesh. He was fifteen at the time, and suffered that fate because he’d been hungry enough to steal. What he took wasn’t even all that valuable, yet he was given a lifetime of servitude as punishment.

The others all had similar marks burned into their arms because it was legally required, ostensibly to avoid confusing the free from the enslaved. But it seemed far more likely that it was done so they’d accept their positions, reinforcing the tenuous hold any master had over them, a sort of psychological chain that held them bound. One man may not have changed the conditions of life for so many strangers in Cradle’s Edge, but all of them working together could.

“There’s more of us than there are of them,” he said, voicing the unthinkable.

Several sets of eyes, sockets molded by O’stari ancestry as well as human—marks of a new people blended of two others—met his own.

But no one answered.


	22. The Home that Wasn't

Chapter 20: The Home that Wasn’t

“Why is the truth of _Boawe Zeo_ so awful that it can break otherwise healthy minds?”

–Zieq Sybijui, O’stari psychologist

“The machine spirit said that a half-O’stari would probably come one day,” Rustown commented as he handed a bowl and a metal spoon of Before make over to Zanna.

“It was expecting me?” As far as Zanna knew, she only had a connection to Shade’s Respite, and didn’t understand why the Archivist of Red Lodge would know of her.

“Not you in particular,” Rustown clarified. “It just said that it had been left behind in part to educate the children of the O’stari. Unfortunately, there was a thief who came here, and I haven’t heard the machine spirit since.”

The stew was a rich mixture of meat she didn’t recognize, mushrooms, and some kind of plant stems and leaves that curled like the shell of a garden snail. Not wanting to offend her host, she blew on the hot stew in her spoon before slurping the bite down.

“The Archivist was stolen?” she asked. “But you still have power here.”

Indeed he did. Not only were they dining in the soft glow of lines of light around the edges of the room, similar to the lights at Shade’s Respite, but Rustown also led her through a series of door that open of their own accord at their approach.

“I scared the thief off, but not before he dislodged some of the—” Rustown waved a hand in a circle, searching for the right terms. “—items from the wall full of veins. I didn’t want to try fixing it and make it worse.”

Zanna huffed on a too hot bite, then swallowed before speaking. “I might be able to restore the Archivist.”

Rustown frowned. “How would you know how?”

“Because I have another one that lives in me. It will tell me how.”

He gaped in silent disbelief. “How did you do it? How did you transfer the machine spirit?”

Zanna shrugged. “I just sat in a chair and the Archivist transferred itself. They were built to do that for us, I guess. Not a pleasant experience, though.”

“When you’re finished, I will show you where the pieces lie.”

Zanna ate the rest of her bowl of stew in silence, barely chewing between bites. Soon she would have what she needed, which meant she could get back to the launch facility. With luck, Elaivani hadn’t made too many enemies, and they’d both have the freedom to come and go as they pleased.

Rustown took her empty bowl and swished some water in it, but made no more effort to clean it before he escorted her farther into the building to a closet full of translucent wiring and small lights. Most of the lights were a bluish shade of white, but the flashing yellow ones caught her attention, beating out a staccato warning ignored until now.

“Where are the missing parts,” she asked, reaching a hand into the loose wiring following the color coded hallucinations her own Archivist presented.

Rustown fetched a metal box where Zanna could see a power cell, glowing beneath the delicate lines of pale metal next to another part that was far less showy, composed of a perfectly symmetrical flat gray case, with multiple sockets along all of its edges. She could understand his confusion at the thought of making the repairs as all of the holes were the same size, and none had any identifying marks that she could see without the colors Archivist displayed before her vision. She found the wires in the open panel that corresponded with each of the sockets and plugged them in.

As she worked, more pinpoints of light appeared along the edges of the case. After she attached the last one, aware of Rustown’s eager gaze, she fit the power cell into its own cradle, then closed the panel.

“Archivist?” Zanna asked, directing the question at the empty air.

“Self diagnosis commencing,” said a disembodied voice, this one with a higher pitch than the one she was familiar with from her original home. There were more flickers of the ambient lighting of the room, a dark point that raced along the walls systematically before returning everything to normal.

“Greetings, Zanna Route,” the Red Lodge Archivist said at last. “How can I be of service?”

Zanna glanced over at Rustown. His knuckles were bloodless in his clasped hands and his shining eyes reflected the points of white light with a disconcerting similarity to animals gazing into a campfire.

“I came for knowledge,” Zanna answered. “I need to know about ship building.”

“I have been disconnected for some time,” the Red Lodge Archivist observed. “Do you wish to return home to your people? This facility contains many of the needed parts to build one, specifically for the purpose of returning lost children to Water.”

Zanna smiled. This Archivist might sound different from hers, but she could see a resemblance all the same. “I’ve already visited Water, but I returned to do something about the _Baowe Zeo._ ”

“Of course. A means of escape would be invaluable. I will link with your Archivist and transmit the instructions.”

“You went to the O’stari world?” Rustown asked. “What was it like? The O’stari are amazing; I would love to see the world that made them for myself.”

“It was interesting,” Zanna said. “I met the rest of my family. My father is not what I expected, but I’m not unhappy about it. I used to worry that he might be a monster.”

“Pssht,” Rustown scoffed. “Have you seen what humans do to each other? Do the O’stari have slavery?”

“No,” Zanna admitted. “Their world is beautiful. I think they made a mistake in attacking Earth because they didn’t understand what the People from Before were doing and why. Afterwards they tried to fix it.”

“A friend of mine was O’stari, but he was summoned home a long time ago. He told me so many things about how to heal the land.”

“Is that why you’re here at the compound? Why do you have those statues?”

Rustown drew himself up a little taller. “I protect the trees so they can sing the rain song to the clouds. Those are there to keep away the bandits and scavengers.”

What a strange man. Zanna knew nothing of trees talking.

“Do you know Nike Skipper?” she asked. “I stayed at the Red Lodge before coming here and he mentioned you.”

“What did the old goat say?” Rustown barked. “That I was crazy? Misguided? The fool.”

He poked at one of the walls, examining the scale of peeled material before smoothing it back into place. “Nike was once my friend. Practically my brother. We used to explore the ruins of cities together.”

“What happened?”

“He became convinced that the People from Before were the closest to perfection any human could achieve. But I saw the horrors people today inflict on each other, and understood that it had to come from within us. It’s part of our nature. That’s why I try so hard to learn from the O’stari. I wish to transcend human nature.”

“Transfer complete,” her Archivist said in her mind, interrupting her thoughts before she could respond.

“Listen, humans and O’stari can work together,” Zanna said. “It’s happening right now. I came from a launch facility in the salt flats to the southwest. The People from Before have returned from space, I brought an O’stari man with me when I came back from Water, and we’re all working together.”

Rustown cocked his head. “Why?”

“Remember the _Baowe Zeo_ that I mentioned to the ‘machine spirit’?”

“‘ _The rolling death?’_ ” Rustown translated. “My friend spoke of it, but didn’t want to elaborate much.”

“ It’s something bad enough to scare the O’stari,  why they left Earth at the end of the war . We’re trying to defeat it.”

* * *

Zanna climbed back into Elaivani’s Before-cart, starting the ignition and turning around to return to the road by which she arrived.

She pressed the accelerator, harder than necessary, speeding along the cracked road as the sunrise display of pink, orange, and purple shifted to the the golden light of mid morning. Rustown gave her lodging for the previous night, and even offered her breakfast before she left for the long drive back to the launch facility, but she was too eager to finish her task. Once she returned, she would have earned Conan’s trust, and then they could get on with protecting Earth from the _Baowe Zeo_.

After a few hours, she came to the place where the old highway divided, one branch continuing south and the other veering westward, past the remains of Vernal and to the salt flats far beyond. With her early start, she estimated that she could be back at the launch facility before the next sunrise.

“May I make a suggestion?” Archivist said. The intrusion into her lulled state was not unwelcome. It wouldn’t do to crash into something because she was hypnotized by the road.

“What’s that?” Zanna asked.

“I recommend deviating from the plan a little and returning to Shade’s Respite.”

“Why? That’s a long way to go.”  
“There are useful samples of many species there,” Archivist explained. “Plants and fungi that can help with building and restoring the environment, plus some tools. It will add less than two days to your journey.”

Zanna pondered, secretly wondering if her machine-voice was trying to sabotage her efforts, delaying long enough for Elaivani to get himself killed by the fearful remnants of the People from Before. But that didn’t make much sense. Conan didn’t seem the type to do such a thing. And besides, if Zanna returned and found that the master of the launch facility had reneged on the deal, there would be nothing to stop her from leaving immediately and working on her own to return to Water. She had the ship plans now.

“Alright,” she said, conceding to Archivist’s suggestion. She adjusted her grip on the steering wheel and took the left fork to continue south.

When the sun had passed overhead and began its descent to the western horizon, Archivist directed her by generating the illusion of blue marks on the road, sending her to the southwest.

“Where are we going?” Zanna asked.

“There is a town not far from here,” Archivist said. “You have forgotten to eat—rest and food is in order before we continue.”

A few minutes later, Zanna parked the Before-cart, disconnected the ignition, and walked the rest of the way.

Fly-J. She’d been through the town before, back when she first traveled to Shade’s Respite with Amarice.

Little had changed, except one of the buildings had burned to the ground, leaving behind a blackened square, an ominous absence sandwiched between cheerfully painted shops. She suppressed a shiver as she passed, remembering the attack by Earth’s Wall on her own home, then bought two meat-stuffed rolls and a mug of wine at the tavern below the winery on the hill.

She didn’t linger in town, drinking her wine quickly and taking the food with her to eat one on the walk back as she left the tavern and returned to the Before-cart to continue her journey. The other she saved for the road to quiet Archivist’s rumblings.

When the sun vanished below the horizon, Zanna flipped the switch for the headlights and continued until she saw the glow of Cradle’s Edge in the distance. From there, she made a wide circle around the city, going off road to do so. At the edge of the canyon, the great cradle for which the city was named, she parked the vehicle and rested for the night. She could find a way down in the morning.


	23. The Duel

Chapter 21: The Duel

“When fate finds us, may you be a tree—and I, the dirt at your roots.”

–Wall Xaco, _Beauty’s Kiss_ , verse 83

Amarice returned to the hangar, in the hopes that Wendy would give Goodwrench leave to join her for another trip into the ruins. She waved to Elaivani, surrounded again by a cluster of spark priests currently piecing together more power cells at a long communal workbench. Two of them linked together was sufficient to power one of the smaller ships, once they got the plans back from Zanna to start building them. Wendy stood among them, not as much of a leader among them in the presence of the prophet himself.

“Hello,” Amarice chirped. “I’m going into the ruins again and I could use some company.”

“Best to take Goodwrench again, she’s pretty much useless here,” one of the other spark priests—Certified—quipped.

Goodwrench cringed where she stood at Elaivani’s side happily piecing together a power source far beyond anything in the Captured Water temple’s previous knowledge. She hunched over her project like a dog kicked too often huddled in a corner to avoid its master’s feet.

Blood rushed to Amarice’s face on Goodwrench’s behalf.

“Hey, you,” she growled. “Take it back, now.”

“Why?” Certified asked. “It’s true—she nearly broke one earlier.”

He turned away, focusing again on his work.

But Amarice wasn’t finished. She shoved one hand in her pocket and withdrew the first object that brushed her fingertips, a dark green stone with white veins. She planned to give it to Goodwrench, but in her anger this seemed a much better use for it. She flung it at the spark priest’s head, and it clanged against his metal hat then spun off to disappear under the furniture.

The spark priest stood suddenly, turning on her with fists balled in his own anger.

“Very well, I accept,” Certified ground out. He took the club from his own belt.

Elaivani facepalmed.

“If you’re going to duel, take it outside,” he said as Amarice and Certified glared at each other. “I don’t want a repeat of this morning’s incident.”

Without a word, Certified left the teaching area, making a beeline for the door to the south side exterior of the building. Amarice followed, along with the rest of the spark priests, curious to see the outcome.

Once outside, Amarice took her crowbar out of her satchel, dropping the bag in the sandy soil without another thought. The spark priest was taller than her, and wearing armor. Picking a fight with him wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done. In the heat of the moment, she hadn’t considered that she might get hurt, that she might lose. But seeing the look on Goodwrench’s face when the other spark priest spoke the insult so casually, as if it were an everyday practice, was all she could think about when she threw the stone.

The onlookers surrounded the two combatants, leaving a large open circle for them to duel.

Certified swung first, but Amarice dodged out of the way. She swiped with her crowbar, landing a hit on the meaty flesh of his armored thigh. The spark priest took the impact with a low grunt and his club smacked hard into Amarice’s side, missing the bones, but sending her sprawling in the bare dirti gasping for air.

Amarice rolled away as Certified advanced with his club pointed at her. The normal rules of dueling demanded that she would have the opportunity to yield without further harm. She wouldn’t be able to take many more direct blows like that one. But the spark priest was a fool if he thought he’d beaten her so easily.

Grasping a handful of the loose, salty dirt in the hand under her, she waited for Certified’s approach. Before the the spark priest could get a word out to demand her surrender, Amarice chucked her the soil at his face and was rewarded with the sound of him choking on it. She rushed at his legs, throwing her entire mass at tackling him.

He fell hard to the ground, still spitting dirt while the tears streamed down his face.

Amarice pushed the stray mess of curls out of her eyes, looking down at the blinking, confused spark priest.

“Yield,” she said, pointing her crowbar at the man. “And apologize to Goodwrench.”

“Fine,” Certified grumbled. Still trying to rub the salt out of his red eyes, he rolled up to his knees to face Goodwrench. “I’m sorry for calling you useless.”

Amarice couldn’t take his apparent foul mood seriously when Tethered Ball priests liked to fight so much. He’d get over it soon enough.

With the duel over, she offered him a hand to help him back to his feet. It was only the right thing to do, especially after fighting dirty like she did. The spark priest accepted her hand, then walking off to the gentle teasing from the onlookers. Goodwrench followed her while she slipped her crowbar back into her bag. Amarice lifted her shirt to examine the spot where Certified’s club impacted. The bruise already blossomed in a deep shade of purple.

“I don’t know if it will help you in the long run,” Amarice said. “But I couldn’t stand by without doing something about it.”

Goodwrench  was speechless , only able to stare at her champion  through  shining eyes.  With Amarice’s hands occupied , Goodwrench lunged forward and planted her lips on the other woman’s.  Then stepped back  just as quickly .  It wasn’t the best kiss  Amarice had ever  experienced , but there was no denying the passion and gratitude it contained.

“Thank you,”  Goodwrench said. “I’ve never had anyone stand up for me like that before.”

Amarice stood still. Goodwrench blushed and fiddled with the hem of her tunic.

“You like women? Me?” Amarice asked, a hopeful tilt in her eyebrows. Goodwrench nodded, then shaded a deeper red. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

The spark priest studied her feet. “I didn’t think you’d be interested,” she mumbled. “My scars.” 

It never occurred to Amarice to think she might be insecure about  something so trivial .  Her hands ceased brushing the dirt from her clothes . There were more important things for  them to be doing  anyway . 

Closing the distance between them, Amarice held Goodwrench’s face in both of her palms.

She traced the lines across Goodwrench’s neck with her fingers  before sliding them up into her hair ,  marveling at beauty of the marks.

“ Y our scars are the nearest thing to the hand print of a god,”  she said, letting the truth of statement fill her eyes. “H ow could I think they were anything but beautiful?”

Goodwrench’s lips curved into a shy smile and she wrapped her arms around Amarice.

“Shall we try that again?” Amarice asked. At Goodwrench’s tiny nod, she leaned forward, pressing their lips together slow and gentle.

* * *

Taco Jack fanned himself as he swayed side to side on the unenthusiastic donkey, leading the train of dancers and trade goods through the salt flat.

There. There it was, the jewel in the white plain of salt. The launch facility wavered in the heat shimmer, glittering with all the possibilities he could dream. As his party traveled closer, he could see the figures at work, tending the gardens, and toiling away at other tasks he couldn’t name. But they were wearing the sacred raiment of more than one temple. Whoever was in charge of the operation must be wealthy beyond anything Taco had experienced in all his time of adventuring.

Taco frowned. Amarice hadn’t come back after months, when it only took him and his dancers a few weeks. She might have been waylaid by bandits. Or if she made so far as the salt flats, there was always the chance that the spark priests had turned hostile on her.

Contru pulled her own donkey up beside him. The stubborn woman had insisted on the same accommodations  that he reserved for himself and his best dancers, those who would be the most likely to win in a fight, and therefore the ones he wanted by his side.  Stinker held  fast  to the saddle in front of her, eyes alert for any sign of his mother.

“ Is that the place?” Constru asked. “This is where my daughter went?”

“Yes.” After dealing with her sharp tongue for the entire trip, it was a relief to point her at another target. But that might also give the wrong impression to a valuable client. He would have to tread carefully.

“Good.” It was such a small thing to say, yet held the promise of all the retribution she could conjure. Better nip that in the bud.

“We need to be nice for them,” Taco said. “If she’s not here it doesn’t mean they’re bad people.”

Constru gave him a vicious smile. “I’ll be nice.”

That didn’t ease his concern in the slightest.

T hey arrived at the door  tall  enough to accommodate three of his wagons stacked on top of each other,  but b efore Taco could offer a greeting, Constru and Stinker were already off the other donkey.

A  man with graying hair  who  wasn’t dressed like a spark priest  waited for them . 

“If you’ve come to sell me something, you’re wasting your time,” he said. “We don’t have many fochs here.”

“ Where is my daughter?” Constru demanded. He exchanged a glance with the woman in the orange jumpsuit next to him.   
“ Who?” he asked.

“Amarice.”

He squinted, studying her face.

“I can see a resemblance,” he said dryly. “She’s currently on a supply run, but should be back before sunset.”

“I’ll wait.” Constru folded her arms, planting herself near the front door, regardless of the inconvenience to anyone else.

He laughed and extended an arm in a gesture of welcome. “My name is Conan. Would you like to wait inside?”

Constru paused to consider the offer. “All right.”

Another gesture to the stable were a pair of mounted Blue Bird messengers tended their mules. “If you want to see to your animals first, there is the place for them. But you’re all welcome inside.”

Two of the dancers unhitched the donkeys and guided them to the stable while the others followed close behind Taco and Constru as they went with Conan into the main building.

He led them to a dining hall that could accommodate half of a small town’s worth of people. The gears turned in Taco’s mind, estimating the size of the force here. If they turned hostile, there would be little his dancers could do to protect him against so many enemies. More reason to be nice. If only Constru would control her mouth.

Their host vanished into the adjacent kitchen and reemerged with a tray filled with foam-capped mugs. He passed the beer around to all the visitors, except for Stinker, who he gave a smaller mug filled with water and a bowl of strawberries.

“There are a lot of spark priests here,” Taco observed. “How are you paying them?”

Conan shrugged. “I don’t. They just showed up and insisted on helping.”

“Helping with what?”

Their host glanced at the child happily chewing strawberries, the juice already a red-stained ring around his mouth and coating his fingers. “I’m not sure its appropriate to discuss in front of the little one. Don’t want to give him nightmares.”

“Stop stalling,” Constru growled. “Just tell us what is going on.”

Conan took a deep breath. “Did Amarice tell you why the O’stari left?”

“Oh, that.” Constru deflated. “What are you going to do about clouds that bring death?”

Conan smiled. “It sounds impossible, doesn’t it? But I’m trying to save humanity.”

The door opened, breaking the tense silence that fell over the group. Amarice and another woman with thin lines of scar tissue like tree limbs growing up her neck and jaw burst in with a little giggle.

Amarice stopped short, faced with her mother and son. She touched her forehead in greeting. The other woman looked back and forth between them in confusion.

“Mother, this is Goodwrench,” Amarice said with a cough.


	24. A Trap Sprung

Chapter 22: A Trap Sprung

“In Fly-J, people paint falling stars on their homes asking for the blessings of the spirits. I believe it comes from the final battle with the O’stari, when ships fell from the sky in streaks of fire.”

–Ford Deere, storyteller

The slaves were unseen as always. They went about their work, unimportant, unworthy of notice. Not invisible in the literal sense, just so far beneath the master of the house, his family, his guests, that they moved about their day undisturbed most of the time. Logan doubted that Solstice Valmonde even remembered their names when he happened to want something from them specifically.

He grasped the handle of the hoe he used for gardening, putting it to a completely different purpose. Invisibility was a boon; he would use it well.

The burn scar on the inside of his arm hadn’t been completely erased yet, but the others could no longer wait. It was only a matter of time before someone important discovered that the marks holding them in bondage were fading. Since Myslene handed out those alien patches on her way back from some errand her master must have sent her to accomplish, the slaves passed them around to each other in secret, hiding their own fading marks as they saw to the healing of others.

They planned their uprising in whispers furtively exchanged between fence posts and in passing at the market, between loads lifted on bent backs. The powerful elites of Cradle’s Edge were about to get a nasty surprise. All that was left was to wait for the signal.

Waiting for the cover of darkness gave them the best advantage. The majority of the two houses’ slaves were of mixed extraction, those with O’stari blood would take point and lead the purely human ones through the shadows. Once they’d escaped their masters, they had to leave the city without giving the guards the opportunity to rally in force.

Logan took the hoe along with a pair of pitchforks with him to his cabin, ostensibly to give them routine care to keep them in good working order. They all needed to be cleaned and oiled to make work easier later. But he had no intention of doing such maintenance tonight.

Once inside his cabin, Logan put together a makeshift pack from a piece of cloth wrapped and tied over a few small tools and some of the lighter preserved food from the root cellar. None of the slaves had water skins of their own, since water was usually fetched from a communal well and drunk during rest periods with dippers fashioned from gourds.

Logan opened one of his windows, through which he could see the square, stucco-walled tower rising above the skyline of the city where the mayor often spent his leisure observing the less fortunate below. He sat on the short stool next to the window, watching for the signal, fidgeting with a nervous tension, bouncing his leg and tapping his fingers on his knee.

Shortly after sunset, a candle light appeared in the darkened tower window. The flare of light illuminated Myslene’s face from below, casting her worried, resolved features in eerie relief. She waved her hand in front of the flame three times, pausing, then three times again. It meant the mayor slept in an overfed stupor, as he was wont to do most nights, and the dogs had been drugged.

Logan exited the cabin that had been his home for the past seven years, less a place of safety and rest than a reminder of his sad state as one of the enslaved. An electric light still hovered in the window on the second floor. The mayor might be too complacent, too sure of his hold over his own slaves and slept soundly, but Solstice was too paranoid to rest, often keeping awake long into the night, no matter how much he drank.

The guards, a pair on loan from the city for a hefty donation, patrolled the exterior of the main house, but did not venture so far as the slave cabins. That suited Logan just fine. Some of more angry among his fellows wanted to kill the guards on their way out, arguing that to be a bystander to their oppression was to support it, regardless of their professed views on the practice. Logan couldn’t find a suitable rebuttal that wouldn’t cause a fatal division in their little group, but saw the practical side. He just wanted to leave quietly and live free.

Doors creaked open and shut around him, the slaves emerging from their tiny prisons with the implements of their former bondage in hand and the cold light of the moon shining on their faces.

Silent as ghosts in the darkness, they filed after Logan, taking the same path Dromat had during his ill-fated attempt to flee. When they reached the wall, some braced against it to give others a boost to the top. It was the most coordinated effort Logan had ever seen from the revolving group that once called Solstice Valmonde their master.

Near the stumps of the lemon trees, a torch bobbed, the firelight illuminating the armored man coming closer. They’d been spotted, but he didn’t yet understand what was happening.

“Who’s there?” called the guard as he squinted, trying to identify the shapes clambering over the wall.

“We have to do something,” one of the other escaping slaves hissed at Logan.

He only nodded in response, moving closer to the guard with one of the pitchforks in a tight  grip.

“We are free people,” Logan replied to the guard. And then he charged, sinking the pitchfork into the vulnerable flesh between the sections of leather armor.

The guard’s face was familiar. He once told Logan that he didn’t approve of slavery while he rested alongside them one hot afternoon, sharing a drink of tepid water. It didn’t matter in the end. The guard was in the employ of the city, and at present Solstice Valmonde as well. Logan tugged the handle, then grasped the blood-coated root of the pitchfork to pull it free with a sucking sound as the guard gasped his last breaths. For a long time, Logan stared at the blood on his hands, glistening darkly in the fading light of the guttering torch.

Coming back to himself, Logan took the torch, then hit the wall at a run and pulled himself over.

* * *

Zanna parked the Before-cart on the flat rocks near the burbling stream flowing out of the forest surrounding her birthplace. Though she had few memories of the place from her childhood, seeing Archivist’s recordings lent her a sense of connection.

The woods were alive in a way at odds with the desert canyon surrounding it, as if the stone walls and blazing sunlight embraced the foreign greenery like a lost soulmate rediscovered. Birds chattered from the branches, calling insults to their neighbors. Small, lean hares darted through the undergrowth, startling at Zanna’s approaching footsteps.

Bright green tipped the trees surrounding the compound, new growth for another year, but the area remained otherwise unchanged from the last time she visited. Zanna manually opened the door, working the overly complicated mechanism with Archivist’s hallucinations of color to guide her, before stepping inside.

Standing in a halo of light streaming through the trees outside, Zanna peered into the shadowy interior of the room, unable to shake a feeling of melancholic foreboding. It was an empty space that felt completely wrong somehow, as though the cavernous darkness whispered that _she should not be there._ She shook it off; this was once her home, after all.

“ Do you remember where the cloning chamber was?” Archivist asked in her mind.

“Yes, but I can’t see in here,” Zanna complained. “Not enough light, and we don’t have a power cell.”

“I will guide you. My sense of distance with your steps is excellent.”

Following Archivist’s directions, Zanna made her way to the cloning room filled with artificial wombs.  Blue lines glowing in the pitch black room indicated that she should open the drawers. She took what was inside, grasping without enough light to read the labels, and shov ed the small vials into the bag slung across her shoulder.  Once the first drawer was empty, she moved to the next. Halfway through, her bag was full nearly to overflowing.

“We’ll have to go empty this and come back,” she grumbled. “I really hope I don’t trip over something.”

The machine voice was quiet, only producing more of the hallucinations to give her something to follow out into the daylight once more.

On the short walk to the Before-cart, Zanna took one of the vials out of her bag to examine it. The label was a cream colored paper in a finer texture than any she’d seen on Earth, printed with the swirling characters of the O’stari language. Inside,  black specks  floated in a viscous, pale yellow-pinkish liquid. 

“What is this?” Zanna asked, unfamiliar with the words on the label. Her understanding of the O’stari language was still limited, though she’d learned a lot in the last few months.

“Carrot seeds from Earth, modified to produce more pollen and suspended in a preservative,” Archivist replied.

“ Why? We already grow lots of carrots.”

“Genetic analysis indicated that honeybees were once near extinction. Extra pollen was to help them survive easier.”

Zanna shrugged and returned the vial of seeds to the bag. Once she reached the Before-cart, she emptied the bag onto the passenger’s side floor board and then returned to the cloning lab for another bag full of vials.

* * *

Ryumeud  turned over the bones he found in the knee-high grass. Among the scattered  remains , he also found scraps of clothing, a pitchfork,  an arm length metal rod, and a pair of machetes, all pitted and stained from exposure to the elements. The design of the patch stitched onto the clothing was something he’d seen in Cradle’s Edge on shop banners, painted on faces, and dyed into clothing. He didn’t yet know what it meant, but to find it in two places separated by so much distance had to mean something.

Clues could come from an unexpected source, but the longer he spent at the abandoned location, the farther his targets would be. One of the skulls were fractured in a way that implied impact. The poor bastard would have died instantly. He didn’t know why someone would want to burn Zanna’s home, but obviously a fight happened there. There was nothing more the site could tell him for now. 

Ryumeud  boarded his ship and sank into the pilot’s seat,  lacing his fingers behind his head while he stared at the ceiling of the cockpit. He might have done his due diligence in  studying the ruins , but realistically this was a dead end and he had no more leads left to pursue to find Zanna. That left only the spark priests, for some  tiny  hope of finding Elaivani.

A light came to life on the console,  the shade of orange that seemed to appeal to his  own Archivist. Strange how the machines developed affinity with each other. There was an artificial intelligence  that came standard in ships , not as smart and capable as the Archivists, but still useful for flying in space while those aboard hibernated.

He slammed his hands down on the armrests, cursing because he was so far away from the source of the signal, then started the engine and lifted off.  This was the lucky break he searching for.


End file.
